LB I5S5 



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LB 1555 

.N27 

1895a 



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REPORT OF THE COMMIT- 
TEE OF FIFTEEN ^ BY 
W. T. HARRIS, LL. D., A. S. 
DRAPER, LL. D., AND H. S. 
TARBELL ^ READ AT THE 
CLEVELAND MEETING OF 
THE DEPARTMENT OF SU- 
PERINTENDENCE, FEBRU- 
ARY 19-21, 1895, WITH 
THE DEBATE 



A-A^«-<rH 




PUBLISHED BY THE NEW ENGLAND PUB- 
LISHING COMPANY g^ BOSTON 
MDCCCXCV 



A/z7 



BY TRANOFER 

UN 20 1909 



^ 






V. 



CORRELATION OF STUDIES IN 
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. 



BY W. T. HARRIS, LL. D. 



The undersigned Committee agrees upon the follow- 
ing report, each member reserving for himself the ex- 
pression of his individual divergence from the opinion 
of the majority, by a statement appended to his signa- 
ture, enumerating the points to which exception is 
taken and the grounds for them. 

I. CORRELATION OF STUDIES. 

Your Committee understands by correlation of 
studies : — 

!. Logical order of topics and branches. 

First, the arrangement of topics in proper sequence 
in the course of study, in such a manner that each 
branch develops in an order suited to the natural and 
easy progress of the child, and so that each step is 
taken at the proper time to help his advance to the 
next step in the same branch, or to the next steps in 
other related branches of the course of study. 

2. Symmetrical whole of studies ifi the world of human 

learning. 

Second, the adjustment of the branches of study in 
such a manner that the whole course at any given time 
represents all the great divisions of human learning, 
as far as is possible at the stage of maturity at which the 



4 Committee of Fifteen, 

pupil has arrived, and that each allied group of studies 
is represented by some one of its branches best 
adapted for the epoch in question ; it being implied 
that there is an equivalence of studies to a greater or 
less degree within each group, and that each branch of 
human learning should be represented by some equiva- 
lent study ; so that, while no great division is left un- 
represented, no group shall have superfluous represen- 
tatives, and thereby debar other groups from a proper 
representation. 

J. Psychological symmetry — the whole mind. 

Third, the selection and arrangement of the branches 
and topics within each branch, considered psychologi- 
cally, with a view to afford the best exercise of the 
faculties of the mind, and to secure the unfolding of 
those faculties in their natural order, so that no one 
faculty is so overcultivated or so neglected as to pro- 
duce abnormal or one-sided mental development. 

4. Correlation of pupils course of study with the world 
in which he lives — his spiritual and natural 
environment. 

Fourth and chiefly, your Committee understands by 
correlation of studies the selection and arrangement 
in orderly sequence of such objects of study as shall 
give the child an insight into the world that he lives 
in, and a command over its resources such as is ob- 
tained by a helpful co-operation with one's fellows. 
In a word, the chief consideration to which all others 
are to be subordinated, in the opinion of your Com- 
mittee, is this requirement of the civilization into 
which the child is born, as determining not only what 
he shall study in school, but what habits and customs 
he shall be taught in the family before the school age 
arrives ; as well as that he shall acquire a skilled ac- 



Committee of Fifteen. 5 

quaintance with some one of a definite series of trades, 
professions, or vocations in the years that follow 
school ; and, furthermore, that this question of the 
relation of the pupil to his civilization determines what 
political duties he shall assume and what religious 
faith and spiritual aspirations shall be adopted for the 
conduct of his life. 

To make more clear their reasons for the prefer- 
ence here expressed for the objective and practical 
basis of selection of topics for the course of study 
rather than the subjective basis so long favored by 
educational writers, your Committee would describe 
the psychological basis, already mentioned, as being 
merely formal in its character, relating only to the ex- 
ercise of the so-called mental faculties. 

It would furnish a training of spiritual powers analo- 
gous to the gymnastic training of the muscles of the 
body. Gymnastics may develop strength and agility 
without leading to any skill in trades or useful employ- 
ment. So an abstract psychological training may de- 
velop the will, the intellect, the imagination, or the 
memory, but without leading to an exercise of acquired 
power in the interests of civilization. The game of 
chess would furnish a good course of study for the dis- 
cipline of the powers of attention and calculation of 
abstract combinations, but it would give its possessor 
little or no knowledge of man or nature. The psycho- 
logical ideal which has prevailed to a large extent in 
education has, in the old phrenology, and in the recent 
studies in physiological psychology, sometimes given 
place to a biological ideal. Instead of the view of 
mind as made up of faculties like will, intellect, imag- 
ination, and emotion, conceived to be all necessary to 
the soul, if developed in harmony with one another, 
the concept of nerves or brain-tracts is used as the 
ultimate regulative principle to determine the selection 



6 Committee of Fifteen. 

and arrangement of studies. Each part of the brain is 
supposed to have its claim on the attention of the edu- 
cator, and that study is thought to be the most valu- 
able which employs normally the larger number of 
brain-tracts. This view reaches an extreme in the 
direction of formal, as opposed to objective or practi- 
cal grounds for selecting a course of study. While the 
old psychology with its mental faculties concentrated 
its attention on the mental processes and neglected 
the world of existing objects and relations upon which 
those processes were directed, physiological psy- 
chology tends to confine its attention to the physical 
part of the process, the organic changes in the brain 
cells and their functions. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that psychology 
of both kinds, physiological and introspective, can 
hold only a subordinate place in the settlement of 
questions relating to the correlation of studies. The 
branches to be studied, and the extent to which they 
are studied, will be determined mainly by the demands 
of one's civilization. These will prescribe what is most 
useful to make the individual acquainted with physical 
nature and with human nature so as to fit him as an 
individual to perform his dudes in the several institu- 
tions — family, civi) society, the state, and the Church. 
But next after this, psychology will furnish important 
considerations that will largely determine the methods 
of instruction, the order of taking up the several topics 
so as to adapt the school work to the growth of the 
pupil's capacity, and the amount of work so as not to 
overtax his powers by too much, or arrest the develop- 
ment of strength by too little. A vast number of sub- 
ordinate details belonging to the pathology of educa- 
tion, such as the hygienic features of school architec- 
ture and furniture, programmes, the length of study 
hours and of class exercises, recreation, and bodily 



Committee of Fiftten, 7 

reactions against mental effort, will be finally settled 
by scientific experiment in the department of physio- 
logical psychology. 

Inasmuch as your Committee is limited to the con- 
sideration of the correlation of studies in the elementary 
school, it has considered the question of the course of 
study in general only in so far as this has been found 
necessary in discussing the grounds for the selection 
of studies for the period of school education occupying 
the eight years from six to fourteen years, or the school 
period between the kindergarten on the one hand and 
the secondary school on the other. It has not been 
possible to avoid some inquiry into the true distinction 
between secondary and elementary studies, since one 
of the most important questions forced upon the atten- 
tion of your Committee is that of the abridgment of 
the elementary course of study from eight or more 
years to seven or even six years, and the corresponding 
increase of the time devoted to studies usually as- 
signed to the high school and supposed to belong to 
the secondary course of study for some intrinsic reason. 

II. THE COURSE OF STUDY EDUCATIONAL VALUES. 

Your Committee would report that it has discussed 
in detail the several branches of study that have found 
a place in the curriculum of the elementary school, 
with a view to discover their educational value for de- 
veloping and training the faculties of the mind, and 
more especially for correlating the pupil with his 
spiritual and natural environment in the world in 
which he lives. 

A. Language studies. 

There is first to be noted the prominent place of 
language study that takes the form of reading, penman, 
ship, and grammar in the first eight years' work of the 



8 * Committee of Fifteen. 

school. It is claimed for the partiality shown to these 
studies that it is justified by the fact that language is 
the instrument that makes possible human social or- 
ganization. It enables each person to communicate 
his individual experience to his fellows and thus per- 
mits each to profit by the experience of all. The 
written and printed forms of speech preserve human 
knowledge and make progress in civilization possible. 
The conclusion is reached that learning to read and 
write should be the leading study of the pupil in his 
first four years of school. Reading and writing are 
not so much ends in themselves as means for the 
acquirement of all other human learning. This con- 
sideration alone would be sufficient to justify their 
actual place in the work of the elementary school. But 
these branches require of the learner a difficult process 
of analysis. The pupil must identify the separate 
words in the sentence he uses, and in the next place 
must recognize the separate sounds in each word. It 
requires a considerable effort for the child or the sav- 
age to analyze his sentence into its constituent words, 
and a still greater effort to discriminate its elementary 
sounds. Reading, writing, and spelling in their most 
elementary form, therefore, constitute a severe training 
in mental analysis for the child of six to ten years of 
age. We are told that it is far more disciplinary to the 
mind than any species of observation of differences 
among material things, because of the fact that the 
word has a twofold character — addressed to external 
sense as spoken sound to the ear, or as written and 
printed words to the eye — but containing a meaning 
or sense addressed to the understanding and only to 
be seized by introspection. The pupil must call up 
the corresponding idea by thought, memory, and 
imagination, or else the word will cease to be a word 
and remain only a sound or character. 



Committee of Fifteen. 9 

On the other hand, observation of things and move- 
ments does not necessarily involve this twofold act of 
analysis, introspective and objective, but only the 
latter — the objective analysis. It is granted that we 
all have frequent occasion to condemn poor methods 
of instruction as teaching words rather than things. 
But we admit that we mean empty sounds or charac 
ters rather than true words. Our suggestions for the 
correct method of teaching amount in this case simply 
to laying stress on the meaning of the word, and to 
setting the teaching process on the road of analysis 
of content rather than form. In the case of words 
used to store up external observation the teacher is 
told to repeat and make alive again the act of obser- 
vation by which the word obtained its original mean- 
ing. In the case of a word expressing a relation be- 
tween facts or events, the pupil is to be taken step by 
step through the process of reflection by which the 
idea was built up. Since the word, spoken and writ- 
ten, is the sole instrument by which reason can fix, 
presei've, and communicate both the data of sense and 
the relations discovered between them by reflection, 
no new method in education has been able to supplant 
in the school the branches, reading and penmanship. 
But the real improvements in method have led teach- 
ers to lay greater and greater stress on the internal 
factor of the word, on its meaning, and have in mani- 
fold ways shown how to repeat the original experiences 
that gave the meaning to concrete words, and the 
original comparisons and logical deductions by which 
the ideas of relations and causal processes arose in 
the mind and required abstract words to preserve and 
communicate them. 

It has been claimed that it would be better to have 
first a basis of knowledge of things, and secondarily and 
subsequently a knowledge of words. But it has been 



to Committee of Fifteen. 

replied to this, that the progress of the child in learn- 
ing to talk indicates his ascent out of mere impressions 
into the possession of true knowledge. For he names 
objects only after he has made some synthesis of his 
impressions and has formed general ideas. He recog- 
nizes the same object under different circumstances of 
time and place, and also recognizes other objects be- 
longing to the same class by and with names. Hence 
the use of the word indicates a higher degree of self- 
activity — the stage of mere impressions without words 
or signs being a comparatively passive state of mind. 
What we mean by things first and words afterward, 
is, therefore, not the apprehension of objects by pas- 
sive impressions so much as the active investigation 
and experimenting which come after words are used, 
and the higher forms of analysis are called into being 
by that invention of reason known as language, which, 
as before said, is a synthesis of thing and thought, of 
outward sign and inward signification. 

Rational investigation cannot precede the invention 
of language any more than blacksmithing can precede 
the invention of hammers, anvils, and pincers. For 
language is the necessary tool of thought used in the 
conduct of the analysis and synthesis of investigation. 

Your Committee would sum up these considerations 
by saying thai language rightfully forms the centre of 
instruction in the elementary school, but that progress 
in methods of teaching is to be made, as hitherto, 
chiefly by laying more stress on the internal side of 
the word, its meaning ; using better graded steps to 
build up the chain of experience or the train of thought 
that the word expresses. 

The first three years' work of the child is occupied 
mainly with the mastery of the printed and written 
forms of the words of his colloquial vocabulary ; words 
that he is already familiar enough with as sounds ad- 



Committee of Fifteen, i i 

dressed to the ear. He has to become familiar with 
the new forms addressed to the eye, and it would be 
an unwise method to require him to learn many new 
words at the same time that he is learning to recognize 
his old words in their new shape. But as soon as he 
has acquired some facility in reading what is printed 
in the colloquial style, he may go on to selections from 
standard authors. The literary selections should be 
graded, and are graded in almost all series of readers 
used in our elementary schools, in such a way as to 
bring those containing the fewest words outside of the 
colloquial vocabulary into the lower books of the 
series, and increasing the difficulties, step by step, as 
the pupil grows in maturity. The selections are liter- 
ary works of art possessing the required organic unity 
and a proper reflection of this unity in the details, as 
good works of art must do. But they portray situa- 
tions of the soul, or scenes of life, or elaborated reflec- 
tions, of which the child can obtain some grasp through 
his capacity to feel and think, although in scope and 
compass they far surpass his range. They are 
adapted, therefore, to lead him out of and beyond 
himself, as spiritual guides. 

Literary style employs, besides words common to 
the colloquial vocabulary, words used in a semi-tech- 
nical sense expressive of fine shades of thought and 
emotion. The literary work of art furnishes a happy 
expression for some situation of the soul, or some train 
of reflection hitherto unutterable in an adequate man- 
ner. If the pupil learns this literary production, he finds 
himself powerfully helped to understand both himself 
and his fellow-men. The most practical knowledge of 
all, it will be admitted, is a knowledge of human nature 
— a knowledge that enables one to combine with his 
fellow-men, and to share with them the physical and 
spiritual wealth of the race. Of this high character as 



12 Committee of Fifteen. 

humanizing or civilizing, are the favorite works of 
literature found in the school readers, about one hun- 
dred and fifty English and American writers being 
drawn upon for the material. Such are Shakespeare's 
speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony, Hamlet's and 
Macbeth's soliloquies, Milton's L'Allegro and II Pense* 
roso, Gray's Elegy, Tennyson's Charge of the Light 
Brigade and Ode on the Death of the Duke of Well- 
ington, Byron's Waterloo, Irving's Rip Van Winkle, 
Webster's Reply to Hayne, The Trial of Knapp, and 
Bunker Hill oration, Scott's Lochinvar, Marmion, and 
Roderick Dhu, Bryant's Thanatopsis, Longfellow's 
Psalm of Life, Paul Revere, and the Bridge, O'Hara's 
Bivouac of the Dead, Campbell's Hohenlinden, Col- 
lins' How Sleep the Brave, Wolfe's Burial of Sir John 
Moore, and other fine prose and poetry from Addison, 
Emerson, Franklin, The Bible, Hawthorne, Walter 
Scott, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Swift, Milton, Cooper, 
Whittier, Lowell, and the rest. The reading and 
study of fine selections in prose and verse furnish the 
chief esthetic training of the elementary school. But 
this should be re-enforced by some study of photo- 
graphic or other reproductions of the world's great 
masterpieces of architecture, sculpture, and painting. 
The frequent sight of these reproductions is good ; 
the attempt to copy or sketch them with the pencil is 
better ; best of all is an aesthetic lesson on their com- 
position, attempting to describe in words the idea of 
the whole that gives the work its organic unity, and 
the devices adopted by the artist to reflect this idea in 
the details and re-enforce its strength. The aesthetic 
taste of teacher and pupil can be cultivated by such 
exercises, and once set on the road of development, 
this taste may improve through life. 

A third phase of language study in the elementary 
school is formal grammar. The works of literary art 



Committee of Fifteen. 13 

in the readers, re-enforced as they ought to be by sup- 
plementary reading at home of the whole works from 
which the selections for the school readers are made, 
will educate the child in the use of a higher and better 
English style. Technical grammar never can do this. 
Only familiarity with fine English works will insure one 
a good and correct style. But grammar is the science 
of language, and as the first of the seven liberal arts it 
has long held sway in school as the disciplinary study 
par excellence. A survey of its educational value, sub- 
jective and objective, usually produces the conviction 
that it is to retain the first place in the future. Its 
chief objective advantage is, that it shows the structure 
of language, and the logical forms of subject, predicate, 
and modifier, thus revealing the essential nature of 
thought itself, the most important of all objects, be- 
cause it is self-object. On the subjective or psycho- 
logical side, grammar demonstrates its title to the 
first place by its use as a discipline in subtle analysis, 
in logical division and classification, in the art of ques- 
tioning, and in the mental accomplishment of making 
exact definitions. Nor is this an empty, formal dis- 
cipline, for its subject-matter, language, is a product 
of the reason of a people, not as individuals, but as a 
social whole, and the vocabularv holds in its store of 
words the generalized experience of that people, in- 
cluding sensuous observation and reflection, feeling 
and emotion, instinct and volition. 

No formal labor on a great objective field is ever 
lost wholly, since at the very least it has the merit of 
familiarizing the pupil with the contents of some one 
extensive province that borders on his life, and with 
which he must come into correlation ; but it is easy 
for any special formal discipline, when continued too 
long, to paralyze or arrest growth at that stage. The 
overcultivation of the verbal memory tends to arrest 



14 Committee of Fifteen. 

the growth of critical attention and reflection. Mem* 
ory of accessory details too, so much prized in the 
school, is also cultivated often at the expense of an 
insight into the organizing principle of the whole 
and the casual nexus that binds the parts. So, too, 
the study of quantity, if carried to excess, may warp 
the mind into a habit of neglecting quality in its 
observation and reflection. As there is no subsump- 
tion in the quantitative judgment, but only dead 
equality or inequality (A is equal to or greater or less 
than B), there is a tendency to atrophy in the faculty 
of concrete syllogistic reasoning on the part of the 
person devoted exclusively to mathematics. For the 
normal syllogism uses judgments wherein the subject 
is subsumed under the predicate (This is a rose — the 
individual rose is subsumed under the class rose ; 
Socrates is a man, etc.). Such reasoning concerns 
individuals in two aspects, first as concrete wholes 
and secondly as members of higher totalities or classes 
— species and genera. Thus, too, grammar, rich as it 
is in its contents, is only a formal discipline as respects 
the scientific, historic, or literary contents of language, 
and is indifferent to ihem. A training for four or five 
years in parsing and grammatical analysis practiced on 
literary works of art (Milton, Shakespeare, Tennyson, 
Scott) is a training of the pupil into habits of indiffer- 
ence toward and neglect of the genius displayed in the 
literary work of art, and into habits of impertinent and 
trifling attention to elements employed as material or 
texture, and a corresponding neglect of the structural 
form, which alone is the work of the artist. A parallel 
to this would be the mason's habit of noticing only the 
brick and mortar, or the stone and cement, in his 
inspection of the architecture, say of Sir Christopher 
Wren. A child overtrained to analyze and classify 
shades of color — examples of this one finds occa 



Committee of Fifteen. 15 

sionally in a primary school whose specialty is " ob- 
jective teaching '^ — might in later life visit an art 
gallery and make an inventory of colors without getting 
even a glimpse of a painting as a work of art. Such 
overstudy and misuse of granrmar as one finds in the 
elementary school, it is feared, exists to some extent 
in secondary schools and even in colleges, in the work 
of mastering the classic authors. 

Your Committee is unanimous in the conviction that 
formal grammar should not be allowed to usurp the 
place of a study of the literary work of art in accord- 
ance with literary method. The child can be gradually 
trained to see the technical " motives " of a poem or 
prose work of art and to enjoy the aesthetic inventions 
of the artist. The analysis of a work of art should 
discover the idea that gives it organic unity ; the colli- 
sion and the complication resulting ; the solution and 
dSnoueme7tt. Of course these things must be reached 
in the elementary school without even a mention of 
their technical terms. The subject of the piece is 
brought out ; its reflection in the conditions of the 
time and place to heighten interest by showing its 
importance ; its second and stronger reflection in the 
several details of its conflict and struggle ; its reflec- 
tion in the denouement wherein its struggle ends in 
victory or defeat and the ethical or rational interests 
are vindicated, — and the results move outward, return- 
ing to the environment again in ever-widening circles, 
— something resembling this is to be found in every 
work of art, and there are salient features which can 
be briefly but profitably made subject of comment in 
familiar language with even the youngest pupils. 
There is an ethical and an sesthetical content to each 
work of art. It is profitable to point out both of these 
in the interest of the child's growing insight into human 
nature. The ethical should, however, be kept in sub- 



1 6 Committee of Fifteen. 

ordination to the aesthetical, but for the sake of the 
supreme interests of the ethical itself. Otherwise the 
study of a work of art degenerates into a goody goody 
performance, and its effects on the child are to cause 
a reaction against the moral. The child protects his 
inner individuality against effacement through external 
authority by taking an attitude of rebellion against 
stories with an appended moral. Herein the superior- 
ity of the aesthetical in literary art is to be seen. For 
the ethical motive is concealed by the poet, and the 
hero is painted with all his brittle individualism and 
self-seeking. His passions and his selfishness, gilded 
by fine traits of bravery and noble manners, interest 
the youth, interest us all. The established social and 
moral order seems to the ambitious hero to be an 
obstacle to the unfolding of the charms of individuality. 
The deed of violence gets done, and the Nemesis is 
aroused. Now his deed comes back on the individual 
doer, and our sympathy turns against him and we 
rejoice in his fall. Thus the aesthetical unity contains 
within it the ethical unity. The lesson of the great 
poet or novelist is taken to heart, whereas the ethical 
announcement by itself might have failed, especially 
with the most self-active and aspiring of the pupils. 
Aristotle pointed out in his Poetics this advantage of 
the aesthetic unity, which Plato in his Republic seems 
to have missed. Tragedy purges us of our passions, 
to use Aristotle's expression, because we identify our 
own wrong inclinations with those of the hero, and by 
sympathy we suffer with him and see our intended 
deed returned upon us with tragic effect, and are 
thereby cured. 

Your Committee has dwelt upon the aesthetic side 
of literature in this explicit manner because they be- 
lieve that the general tendency in elementary schools 
is to neglect the literary art for the literary formalities 



Committee of Fifteen. 17 

which concern the mechanical material rather than the 
spiritual form. Those formal studies should not be 
discontinued, but subordinated to the higher study of 
literature. 

Your Committee reserves the subject of language 
lessons, composition writing, and what relates to the 
child's expression of ideas in writing, for consideration 
under Part 8 of this Report, treating of programme. 

B. Arithmetic. 

Side by side with language study is the study of 
mathematics in the schools, claiming the second place 
in importance of all studies. It has been pointed out 
that mathematics concerns the laws of lime and space 
— their structural form, so to speak — and hence that 
it formulates the logical conditions of all matter both 
in rest and in motion. Be this as it may, the high 
position of mathematics as the science of all quantity 
is universally acknowledged. The elementary branch 
of mathematics is arithmetic, and this is studied in the 
primary and grammar schools from six to eight years, 
or even longer. The relation of arithmetic to the 
whole field of mathematics has been stated (by Comte, 
Howison, and others) to be that of the final step in a 
process of calculation, in which results are stated 
numerically. There are branches that develop or de- 
rive quantitative functions : say geometry for spatial 
forms, and mechanics for movement and rest and the 
forces producing them. Other branches transform 
these quantitative functions into such forms as may 
be calculated in actual numbers; namely, algebra in 
its common or lower form, and in its higher form as 
the differential and integral calculus, and the calculus 
of variations. Arithmetic evaluates or finds the 
numerical value for the functions thus deduced and 
transformed. The educational value of arithmetic is 



1 8 Committee of Fifteen. 

thus indicated both as concerns its psychological side 
and its objective practical uses in correlating man with 
the world of nature. In this latter respect as furnish- 
ing the key to the outer world in so far as the objects 
of the latter are a matter of direct enumeration, — 
capable of being counted, — it is the first great step in 
the conquest of nature. It is the first tool of thought 
that man invents in the work of emancipating himself 
from thraldom to external forces. For by the com- 
mand of number he learns to divide and conquer. He 
can proportion one force to another, and concentrate 
against an obstacle precisely what is needed to over- 
come it. Number also makes possible all the other 
sciences of nature which depend on exact measurement 
and exact record of phenomena as to the following 
items : order of succession, date, duration, locality, en- 
vironment, extent of sphere of influence, number of 
manifestations, number of cases of intermittence. All 
these can be defined accurately only by means of num- 
ber. The educational value of a branch of study that 
furnishes the indispensable first step toward all science 
of nature is obvious. But psychologically its import- 
ance further appears in this, that it begins with an im- 
portant step in analysis ; namely, the detachment of 
the idea of quantity from the^ concrete whole, which 
includes quality as well as quantity. To count, one 
drops the qualitative and considers only the quanti- 
tative aspect. So long as the individual differences 
(which are qualitative in so far as they distinguish one 
object from another) are considered, the objects cannot 
be counted together. When counted, the distinctions 
are dropped out of sight as indifferent. As counting 
is the fundamental operation of arithmetic, and all other 
arithmetical operations are simply devices for speed by 
using remembered countings instead of going through 
the detailed work again each time, the hint is furnished 



Committee of Fifteen. 19 

the teacher for the first lessons in arithmetic. This 
hint has been generally followed out and the child set 
at work at first upon the counting of objects so much 
alike that the qualitative difference is not suggested to 
him. He constructs gradually his tables of addition, 
subtraction, and multiplication, and fixes them in his 
memory. Then he takes his next higher step ; namely, 
the apprehension of the fraction. This is an expressed 
ratio of two numbers, and therefore a much more corn- 
plex thought than he has met with in dealing with the 
simple numbers. In thinking five-sixths, he first thinks 
five and then six, and holding these two in mind thinks 
the result of the first modified by the second. Here 
are three steps instead of one, and the result is not a 
simple numbe r, but an inference resting on an unper- 
formed operation. This psychological analysis shows 
the reason for the embarrassment of the child on his 
entrance upon the study of fractions and the other 
operations that imply ratio. The teacher finds all his 
resources in the way of method drawn upon to invent 
steps and half steps, to aid the pupil to make continu- 
ous progress here. All these devices of method consist 
in steps by which the pupil descends to the simple num- 
ber and returns to the complex. He turns one of the 
terms into a qualitative unit, and thus is enabled to 
use the other as a simple number. The pupil takes 
the denominator, for example, and makes clear his 
conception of one-sixth as his qualitative unit, then 
five-sixths is as clear to him as five oxen. But he has 
to repeat this return from ratio to simple numbers in 
each of the elementary operations — addition, subtrac- 
tion, multiplication, and division, and in the reduction 
of fractions — and finds the road long and tedious at 
best. In the case of decimal fractions the psycho- 
logical process is more complex still ; for the pupil has 
given him one of the terms, the numerator, from which 



20 Committee of Fifteen. 

he must mentally deduce the denominator from the 
position of the decimal point. This doubles the work 
of reading and recognizing the fractional number. But 
it makes addition and subtraction of fractions nearly 
as easy as that of simple numbers and assists also in 
multiplication of fractions. But division of decimals 
is a much more complex operation than that of com- 
mon fractions. 

The want of a psychological analysis of these pro- 
cesses has led many good teachers to attempt decimal 
fractions with their pupils before taking up common 
fractions. In the end they have been forced to make 
introductory steps to aid the pupil, and in these steps 
to introduce the theory of the common fraction. They 
have by this refuted their own theory. 

Besides {a) simple numbers and the four opera- 
tions with them, (/^) fractions common and decimal, 
there is (<f) a third step in number ; namely, the theory 
of powers and roots. It is a further step in ratio ; 
namely, the relation of a simple number to itself as 
power and root. The mass of material which fills the 
arithmetic used in the elementary school consists of 
two kinds of examples : first, those wherein there is a 
direct application of simple numbers, fractions, and 
powers ; and secondly, the class of examples involving 
operations in reaching numerical solutions through in- 
direct data and consequently involving more or less 
transformation of functions. Of this character is most 
of the so-called higher arithmetic and such problems 
in the text-book used in the elementary schools as 
have, not inappropriately, been called (by General 
Francis A. Walker in his criticism on common-school 
arithmetic) numerical "conundrums." Their difficulty 
is not found in the strictly arithmetical part of the 
process of the solution (the third phase above de- 
scribed), but rather in the transformation of the quan- 



Committee of Fifteen. 21 

titative function given into the function that can readily 
be calculated numerically. The transformation of 
functions belongs strictly to algebra. Teachers who 
love arithmetic, and who have themselves success in 
working out the so-called numerical conundrums, de- 
fend with much earnestness the current practice which 
uses so much time for arithmetic. They see in it a 
valuable training for ingenuity and logical analysis, and 
beheve that the industry which discovers arithmetical 
ways of transforming the functions given in such prob 
lems into plain numerical operations of adding, sub- 
tracting, multiplying, or dividing is well bestowed. On 
the other hand, the critics of this practice contend that 
there should be no merely formal drill in school for its 
own sake, and that there should be, always, a sub- 
stantial content to be gained. They contend that the 
work of the pupil in transforming quantitative functions 
by arithmetical methods is wasted, because the pupil 
needs a more adequate expression than number for 
this purpose ; that this has been discovered in algebra, 
which enables him to perform with ease such quanti 
tative transformations as puzzle the pupil in arithmetic. 
They hold, therefore, that arithmetic pure and simple 
should be abridged and elementary algebra introduced 
after the numerical operations in powers, fractions, and 
simple numbers have been mastered, together with 
their applications to the tables of weights and meas- 
ures and to percentage and interest. In the seventh 
year of the elementary course there would be taught 
equations of the first degree and the solution of arith- 
metical problems that fall under proportion, or the 
so-called "rule of three," together with other prob- 
lems containing complicated conditions — those in 
partnership, for example. In the eighth year quad 
ratio equations could be learned, and other prob- 
lems of higher arithmetic solved in a more satisfactory 



22 Committee of Pifteen. 

manner than by numerical methods. It is Contended 
that this earher introduction of algebra, with a sparing 
use of letters for known quantities, would secure far 
more mathematical progress than is obtained at present 
on the part of all pupils, and that it would enable many 
pupils to go on into secondary and higher education 
who are now kept back on the plea of lack of prepara- 
tion in arithmetic, the real difficulty in many cases 
being a lack of ability to solve algebraic problems by 
an inferior method. 

Your Committee would report that the practice of 
teaching two lessons daily in arithmetic, one styled 
" mental," or " intellectual," and the other '* written " 
arithmetic (because its exercises are written out with 
pencil or pen), is still continued in many schools. By 
this device the pupil is made to give twice as much 
time to arithmetic as to any other branch. It is con- 
tended by the opponents of this practice, with some 
show of reason, that two lessons a day in the study of 
quantity have a tendency to give the mind a bent or set 
in the direction of thinking quantitatively, with a cor- 
responding neglect of the power to observe, and to re- 
flect upon, qualitative and causal aspects. For mathe- 
matics does not take account of causes, but only of 
equality and difference in magnitude. It is further 
objected that the attempt to secure what is called thor- 
oughness in the branches taught in the elementary 
schools is often carried too far ; in fact, to such an ex- 
tent as to produce arrested development (a sort of 
mental paralysis) in the mechanical and formal stages 
of growth. The mind, in that case, loses its appetite 
for higher methods and wider generalizations. The 
law of apperception, we are told, proves that tempo- 
rary methods of solving problems should not be so 
thoroughly mastered as to be used involuntarily, or as 
a matter of unconscious habit, for the reason that a 



Committee of Fifteen. 23 

higher and more adequate method of solution will then 
be found more difficult to acquire. The more thor- 
oughly a method is learned, the more it becomes part 
of the mind, and the greater the repugnance of the 
mind toward a new method For this reason, 
parents and teachers discourage young children 
from the practice of counting on the fingers, be- 
lieving that it will cause much trouble later to 
root out this vicious habit and replace it by 
purely mental processes. Teachers should be careful, 
especially with precocious children, not to continue 
too long in the use of a process that is becoming me- 
chanical ; for it is already growing into a second 
nature, and becoming a part of the unconscious apper- 
ceptive process by which the mind reacts against the 
environment, recognizes its presence, and explains it 
to itself. The child that has been overtrained in arith- 
metic reacts apperceptively against his environment 
chiefly by noticing its numerical relations — he counts 
and adds ; his other apperceptive reactions being 
feeble, he neglects qualities and causal relations. 
Another child who has been drilled in recognizing 
colors apperceives the shades of color to the neglect 
of all else. A third child, excessively trained in form 
studies by the constant use of geometric solids, and 
much practice in looking for the fundamental geo- 
metric forms lying at the basis of the multifarious ob- 
jects that exist in the world, will, as a matter of course, 
apperceive geometric forms, ignoring the other phases 
of objects. 

It is, certainly, an advance on immediate sense-per- 
ception to be able to separate or analyze the concrete, 
whole impression, and consider the quantity apart by 
itself. But if arrested mental growth takes place here, 
the result is deplorable. That such arrest may be 
caused by too exclusive training in recognizing numeri- 
cal relations is beyond a doubt. 



24 Committee of Fifteen. 

Your Committee believes that, with the right meth- 
ods, and a wise use of time in preparing the arithmetic 
lesson in and out of school, five years are sufficient for 
the study of mere arithmetic — the five years begin- 
ning with the second school year and ending with the 
close of the sixth year ; and that the seventh and 
eighth years should be given to the algebraic method 
of dealing with those problems that involve difficulties 
in the transformation of quantitative indirect functions 
into numerical or direct quantitative data. 

Your Committee, however, does not wish to be 
understood as recommending the transfer of algebra, 
as it. is understood and taught in most secondary 
schools, to the seventh year, or even to the eighth year 
of the elementary school. The algebra course in the 
secondary school, as taught to the pupils in their fif- 
teenth year of age, very properly begins with severe 
exercises, with a view to discipline the pupil in analyz- 
ing complex literate expressions at sight, and to make 
him able to recognize at once the factors that are con- 
tained in such combinations of quantities. The pro- 
posed seventh-grade algebra must use letters for the 
unknown quantities and retain the numerical form of 
the known quantities, using letters for these very 
rarely, except to exhibit the general form of solution, 
or what, if stated in words, becomes a so-called "rule" 
in arithmetic. This species of algebra has the charac- 
ter of an introduction or transitional step to algebra 
proper. The latter should be taught thoroughly in 
the secondary school. Formerly it was a common 
practice to teach elementary algebra of this sort in the 
preparatory schools, and reserve for the college a study 
of algebra proper. But in this case there was often a 
neglect of sufficient practice in factoring literate quan- 
tities, and, as a consequence, the pupil suffered embar- 
rassment in his more advanced mathematics ; for ex- 



Committee of Fifteen. 25 

ample, in analytical geometry, the differential calculus, 
and mechanics. The proposition of your Committee 
is intended to remedy the two evils already named : 
first, to aid the pupils in the elementary school to 
solve, by a higher method, the more difficult problems 
that now find place in advanced arithmetic ; and sec 
ondly, to prepare the pupil for a thorough course in 
pure algebra in the secondary school. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that the so-called 
mental arithmetic should be made to alternate with 
written arithmetic for two years, and that there should 
not be two daily lessons in this subject. 

C. Geography. 

The leading branch of the seven liberal arts was 
grammar, being the first of the Trivium (grammar, 
rhetoric, and logic). Arithmetic, however, led the sec- 
ond division, the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, 
music, and astronomy). We have glanced at the rea- 
sons for the place of grammar as leading the humane 
studies, as well as for the place of arithmetic as lead- 
ing the nature studies. Following arithmetic, as the 
second study in importance among the branches that 
correlate man to nature, is geography. It is interest- 
ing to note that the old quadrivium of the Middle Ages 
included geography, under the title of geometry, as the 
branch following arithmetic in the enumeration ; the 
subject-matter of their so-called " geometry " being 
chiefly an abridgment of Pliny's geography, to which 
were added a few definitions of geometric forms, 
something like the primary course in geometric solids 
in our elementary schools. So long as there has been 
elementary education there has been something of 
geography included. The Greek education laid stress 
on teaching the second book of Homer, containing the 
Catalogue of the Ships and a brief mention of the 



26 Committee of Fifteen. 

geography and history of all the Greek tribes that 
took part in the Trojan War. History remains un- 
separated from geography and geometry in the Mid- 
dle Ages. Geography has preserved this compre- 
hensiveness of meaning as a branch of the study in 
the elementary schools down to the present day. 
After arithmetic, which treats of the abstract or gen 
eral conditions of material existence, comes geography 
with a practical study of man's material habitat^ and 
its relations to him. It is not a simple science by 
itself, like botany, or geology, or astronomy, but a col- 
lection of sciences levied upon to describe the earth as 
the dwelling-place of man and to explain something of 
its more prominent features. About one-fourth of the 
material relates strictly to the geography, about one- 
half to the inhabitants, their manners, customs, institu- 
tions, industries, productions, and the remaining one- 
fourth to items drawn from the sciences of mineral- 
ogy, meteorology, botany, zoology, and astronomy. 
This predominance of the human feature in a study 
ostensibly relating to physical nature, your Committee 
considers necessary and entirely justifiable. The child 
commences with what is nearest to his interests, and 
proceeds gradually toward what is remote and to be 
studied for its own sake. It is, therefore, a mistake to 
suppose that the first phase of geography presented to 
the child should be the process of continent formation. 
He must begin with the natural difference of climate, 
and lands, and waters, and obstacles that separate 
peoples, and study the methods by which man strives 
to equalize or overcome these differences by industry 
and commerce, to unite all places and all people, and 
make it possible for each to share in the productions 
of all. The industrial and commercial idea is, there- 
fore, the first central idea in the study of geography in 
the elementary schools. It leads directly to the nat- 



Committee of Fifteen. 27 

ural elements of difference in climate, soil, and produc- 
tions, and also to those in race, religion, political 
status, and occupations of the inhabitants, with a view 
to explain the grounds and reasons for this counter- 
process of civilization which struggles to overcome the 
differences. Next comes the deeper inquiry into the 
process of continent formation, the physical struggls 
between the process of upheaving or upbuilding of con- 
tinents and that of their obliteration by air and water ; 
the explanation of the mountains, valleys, and plains, 
the islands, volcanic action, the winds, the rain-dis- 
tribution. But the study of cities, their location, the 
purposes they serve as collecting, manufacturing, and 
distributing centres, leads most directly to the imme- 
diate purpose of geography in the elementary school. 
From this beginning, and holding to it as a permanent 
interest, the inquiry into causes and conditions pro- 
ceeds concentrically to the sources of the raw mate- 
rials, the methods of their production, and the climatic, 
geologic, and other reasons that explain their location 
and their growth. 

In recent years, especially through the scientific 
study of physical geography, the processes that go to 
the formation of climate, soil, and general configur- 
ation of land masses have been accurately determined, 
and the methods of teaching so simplified that it is 
possible to lead out from the central idea mentioned 
to the physical explanations of the elements of geo- 
graphical difference quite early in the course of study. 
Setting out from the idea of the use made of the earth 
by civilization, the pupil in the fifth and sixth years of 
his schooHng (at the age of eleven or twelve) may ex- 
tend his inquiries quite profitably as far as the phys- 
ical explanations of land-shapes and climates. In the 
seventh and eighth year of school much more may be 
done in this direction. But it is believed that the dis- 



28 Committee of Fifteen. 

tinctively human interest connected with geography in 
the first years of its study should not yield to the 
purely scientific one of physical processes until the 
pupil has taken up the study of history. 

The educational value of geography, as it is and has 
been in elementary schools, is obviously very great. 
It makes possible something like accuracy in the pic- 
turing of distant places and events, and removes a 
large tract of mere superstition from the mind. In the 
days of newspaper reading one's stock of geographical 
information is in constant requisition. A war on the 
opposite side of the globe is followed with more inter- 
est in this year than a war near our own borders before 
the era of the telegraph. The general knowledge of 
the locations and boundaries of nations, of their status 
in civilization, and their natural advantages for con- 
tributing to the world market, is of great use to the 
citizen in forming correct ideas from his daily reading. 

The educational value of geography is even more 
apparent if we admit the claims of those who argue 
that the present epoch is the beginning of an era in 
which public opinion is organized into a ruling force 
by the agency of periodicals and books. Certainly 
neither the newspaper nor the book can influence an 
illiterate people ; they can do little to form opinions 
where the readers have no knowledge of geography. 

As to the psychological value of geography little 
need be said. It exercises in manifold ways the mem- 
ory of forms and the imagination; it brings into exer- 
cise the thinking power, in tracing back toward unity 
the various series of causes. What educative value 
there is in geology, meteorology, zoology, ethnology, 
economics, history, and politics is to be found in the 
more profound study of geography, and, to a propor- 
tionate extent, in the study of its merest elements. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that there has 



Committee of Fifteen. 29 

been a vast improvement in the methods of instruction 
in this branch in recent years, due, in large measure, 
to the geographical societies of this and other coun- 
tries. At first there prevailed what might be named 
sailor geography. The pupil was compelled to mem- 
orize all the capes and headlands, bays and harbors, 
mouths of rivers, islands, sounds, and straits around 
the world. He enlivened this, to some extent, by brief 
mention of the curiosities and oddities in the way of 
cataracts, water-gaps, caves, strange animals, public 
buildings, picturesque costumes, national exaggera- 
tions, and such matters as would furnish good themes 
for sailors' yarns. Little or nothing was taught to 
give unity to the isolated details furnished in endless 
number. It was an improvement on this when the 
method of memorizing capital cities and political 
boundaries succeeded. With this came the era of 
map drawing. The study of watersheds and commer- 
cial routes, of industrial productions and centres of 
manufacture and commerce, has been adopted in the 
better class of schools. Instruction in geography is 
growing better by the constant introduction of new 
devices to make plain and intelligible the determining 
influence of physical causes in producing the elements 
of difference and the counter-process of industry and 
commerce by which each difference is rendered of use 
to the whole world, and each locality made a partici- 
pator in the productions of all. 

D. History. 

The next study, ranked in order of value, for the 
elementary school is history. But, as will be seen, 
the value of history, both practically and psycholo- 
gically, is less in the beginning and greater at the end 
than geography. For it relates to the institutions of 
men, and especially to the political state and its evolu- 



30 Committee of Fifteen, 

tion. While biography narrates the career of the in- 
dividual, civil history records the careers of nations. 
The nation has been compared to the individual by 
persons interested in the educational value of history. 
Man has two selves, they say, the individual self, and 
the collective self of the organized state or nation. 
The study of history is, then, the study of this larger, 
corporate, social and civil self. The importance of 
this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its educa- 
tional significance. For to learn this civil self is to 
learn the substantial condition which makes possible 
the existence of civilized man in all his other social 
combinations — the family, the Church, and the 
manifold associated activities of civil society. For 
the state protects these combinations from destruction 
by violence. It defines the limits of individual and 
associated effort, within which each endeavor re- 
enforces the endeavors of all, and it uses the strength 
of the whole nation to prevent such actions as pass 
beyond these safe limits and tend to collision with the 
normal action of the other individuals and social units. 
Hobbes called the state a Leviathan, to emphasize its 
stupendous individuality and organized self-activity. 
Without this, he said, man lives in a state of " constant 
war, fear, poverty, filth, ignorance, and wretchedness ; 
within the state dwell peace, security, riches, science, 
and happiness." The state is the collective man who 
" makes possible the rational development of the in- 
dividual man, like a mortal God, subduing his caprice 
and passion and compelling obedience to law, develop- 
ing the ideas of justice, virtue, and religion, creating 
property and ownership, nurture and education.'* The 
education of the child into a knowledge of this higher 
self begins early within the nurture of the family. 
The child sees a policeman or some town officer, some 
public building, a court house or a jail ; he sees or 



Committee of Fifteen. 31 

hears of an act of violence, a case of robbery or mur- 
der followed by arrest of the guilty. The omni- 
present higher self, which has been invisible hitherto, 
now becomes visible to him in its symbols and still 
more in its acts. 

History in school, it is contended, should be the 
special branch for education in the duties of citizen- 
ship. There is ground for this claim. History gives 
a sense of belonging to a higher social unity which 
possesses the right of absolute control over person and 
property in the interest of the safety of the whole. 
This, of course, is the basis of citizenship ; the in- 
dividual must feel this or see this solidarity of the 
state and recognize its supreme authority. But history 
shows the collisions of nations, and the victory of one 
political ideal accompanied by the defeat of another. 
History reveals an evolution of forms of government 
that are better and better adapted to permit individual 
freedom, and the participation of all citizens in the 
administration of the government itself. 

People who make their own government have a 
special interest in the spectacle of political evolution 
as exhibited in history. But it must be admitted that 
this evolution has not been well presented by popular 
historians. Take, for instance, the familiar example 
of old-time pedagogy, wherein the Roman republic 
was conceived as a freer government than the Roman 
empire that followed it, by persons apparently misled 
by the ideas of representative self-government asso- 
ciated with the word republic. It was the beginning of 
a new epoch when this illusion was dispelled, and the 
college student became aware of the true Roman mean- 
ing of republic^ namely, the supremacy of an oligarchy 
on the Tiber that ruled distant provinces in Spain, 
Gaul, Asia Minor, Germany, and Africa, for its selfish 
ends and with an ever-increasing arrogance. The 



32 Committee of Fifteen, 

people at home in Rome, not having a share in the 
campaigns on the borderland, did not appreciate the 
qualities of the great leaders who, like Caesar, subdued 
the nations by forbearance, magnanimity, trust, and 
the recognition of a sphere of freedom secured to the 
conquered by the Roman civil laws, which were rigidly 
enforced by the conqueror, as much as by the violence 
of arms. The change from republic to empire meant 
the final subordination of this tyrannical Roman 
oligarchy, and the recognition of the rights of the 
provinces to Roman freedom. This illustration shows 
how easily a poor teaching of history may pervert its 
good influence or purpose into a bad one. For the 
Roman monarchy under the empire secured a degree 
of freedom never before attained under the republic, 
in spite of the election of such tyrants as Nero and 
Caligula to the imperial purple. The civil service 
went on as usual administering the affairs of distant 
countries, educating them in Roman jurisprudence, and 
cultivating a love for accumulating private property. 
Those countries had before lived communistically after 
the style of the tribe or ai best of the village com- 
munity. Roman private property in land gave an 
impulse to the development of free individuality such 
as had always been impossible under the social stage 
of development known as the village community. 

To teach history properly is to dispel this shallow 
illusion which flatters individualism, and to open the 
eyes of the pupil to the true nature of freedom, namely, 
the freedom through obedience to just laws enforced 
by a strong government. 

Your Committee has made this apparent digression 
for the sake of a more explicit statement of its con- 
viction of the importance of teaching history in a dif- 
ferent spirit from that of abstract freedom, which 
sometimes means anarchy, although they admit the 



Committee of Fifteen. 33 

possibility of an opposite extreme, the danger of too 
little stress on the progressive element in the growth 
of nations, and its manifestation in new and better 
political devices for representing all citizens without 
weakening the central power. 

That the history of one's own nation is to be taught 
in the elementary school seems fixed by common con- 
sent. United States history includes first a sketch of 
the epoch of discoveries and next of the epoch of col- 
onization. This, fortunately, suits the pedagogic re- 
quirements. For the child loves to approach the stern 
realities of a firmly established civilization through its 
stages of growth by means of individual enterprise. 
Here is the use of biography as introduction to his- 
tory. It treats of exceptional individuals whose lives 
bring them in one way or another into national or 
even world-historical relations. They throw light 
on the nature and necessity of governments, and 
are in turn illuminated by the light thrown back 
on them by the institutions which they promote 
or hinder. The era of semi-private adventure with 
which American history begins is admirably adapted 
for study by the pupil in the elementary stage of 
his education. So, too, the next epoch, that of col- 
onization. The pioneer is a degree nearer to civiliza- 
tion than is the explorer and discoverer. In the colo- 
nial history the pupil interests himself in the enterprise 
of aspiring individualities, in their conquest over ob- 
stacles of climate and soil; their conflicts with, the 
aboriginal population ; their choice of land for settle- 
ment ; the growth of their cities ; above all, their sev- 
eral attempts and final success in forming a constitu- 
tion securing local self-government. An epoch of 
growing interrelation of the colonies succeeds, a ten- 
dency to union on a large scale due to the effect of 
European wars which involved England, France, and 



34 Comm it tee of Fifteen . 

other countries, and affected the relations ot their col- 
onies in America. This epoch, too, abounds in heroic 
personalities, like Wolfe, Montcalm, and Washington, 
and perilous adventures, especially in the Indian war- 
fare. 

The fourth epoch is the Revolution, by which the 
colonies through joint effort secured their independ- 
ence and afterward their union as a nation. The sub- 
ject grows rapidly more complex, and tasks severely 
the powers of the pupils in the eighth year of the 
elementary school. The formation of the Constitu- 
tion, and a brief study of the salient features of the 
Constitution itself, conclude the study of the portion 
of the history of the United States that is sufficiently 
remote to be treated after the manner of an educa- 
tional classic. Everything up to this point stands out 
in strong individual outlines, and is admirably fitted 
for that elementary course of study. Beyond this 
point, the War of 1812 and the War of the Rebellion, 
together with the political events that led to it, are 
matters of memory with the present generation of 
parents and grandparents, and are, consequently, not 
so well fitted for intensive study in school as the 
already classic period of our history. But these later 
and latest epochs may be, and will be, read at home 
not only in the text-book on history used in the schools, 
but also in the numerous sketches that appear in 
newspapers, magazines, and in more pretentious 
shapes. In the intensive study which should be un- 
dertaken of the classic period of our history, the pupil 
may be taught the method appropriate to historical in- 
vestigation, the many points of view from which each 
event ought to be considered. He should learn to 
discriminate between the theatrical show of events and 
the solid influences that move underneath as ethical 
causes. Although he is too immature for very far- 



Committee of Fifteen. 35 

reaching reflections, he must be helped to see the 
causal processes of history. Armed with this dis- 
cipline in historic methods, the pupil will do all of his 
miscellaneous reading and thinking in this province 
with more adequate intellectual reaction than was 
possible before the intensive study carried on in school. 

The study of the outlines of the Constitution, for 
ten or fifteen weeks in the final year of the elementary 
school, has been found of great educational value. 
Properly taught, it fixes the idea of the essential three- 
foldness of the constitution of a free government and 
the necessary independence of each constituent power, 
whether legislative, judicial, or executive. This and 
some idea of the manner and mode of filling the official 
places in these three departments, and of the charac- 
ter of the duties with which each department is charged, 
lay foundations for an intelligent citizenship. 

Besides this intensive study of the history of the 
United States in the seventh and eighth years, your 
Committee would recommend oral lessons on the 
salient points of general history, taking a full hour of 
sixty minutes weekly — and preferably all at one time 
— for the sake of the more systematic treatment of the 
subject of the lesson and the deeper impression made 
on the mind of the pupil. 

E. Other branches. 

Your Committee has reviewed the staple branches 
of the elementary course of study in the light of their 
educational scope and significance. Grammar, liter 
ature, arithmetic, geography, and history are the five 
branches upon which the disciplinary work of the ele- 
mentary school is concentrated. Inasmuch as reading 
is the first of the scholastic arts, it is interesting to 
note that the whole elementary course may be de- 
scribed as an extension of the process of learning the 



26 Committee of Fifteen. 

art of reading. First comes the mastering of the col- 
loquial vocabulary in printed and script forms. Next 
come five incursions into the special vocabularies re- 
quired ia) in literature to express the fine shades of 
emotion and the more subtle distinctions of thought, 
{h) the technique of arithmetic, ic) of geography, {d) 
of grammar, {e) of history. 

In the serious work of mastering these several tech- 
nical vocabularies the pupil is assigned daily tasks that 
he must prepare by independent study. The class 
exercise or recitation is taken up with examining and 
criticising the pupil's oral statements of what he has 
learned, especial care being taken to secure the pupil's 
explanation of it in his own words. This requires 
paraphrases and definitions of the new words and 
phrases used in technical and literary senses, with a 
view to insure the addition to the mind of the new 
ideas corresponding to the new words. The misun- 
derstandings are corrected and the pupil set on the way 
to use more critical alertness in the preparation of his 
succeeding lessons. The pupil learns as much by the 
recitations of his fellow-pupils as he learns from the 
teacher, but not the same things. He sees in the im- 
perfect statements of his classmates that they appre- 
hended the lesson with different presuppositions and 
consequently have seen some phases of the subject 
that escaped his observation, while they in turn have 
missed points which he had noticed quite readily. 
These different points of view become more or less 
his own, and he may be said to grow by adding to 
his own mind the minds of others. 

It is clear that there are other branches of instruc- 
tion that may lay claim to a place in the course of 
study in the elementary school ; for example, the va~ 
rious branches of natural science, vocal music, manual 
training, physical culture, drawing, etc. 



Committee of Fifteen. 37 

Here the question of another method of instruction 
is suggested. There are lessons that require pre- 
vious preparation by the pupil himself — there are 
also lessons that may be taken up without such prep- 
aration and conducted by the teacher, who leads the 
exercise and furnishes a large part of the information 
to be learned, enlisting the aid of members of the 
class for the purpose of bringing home the new mate- 
rial to their actual experience. Besides these, there 
are mechanical exercises for purposes of training, such 
as drawing, penmanship, and calisthenics. 

In the first place, there is industrial and aesthetic 
drawing, which should have a place in all elementary 
school work. By it is secured the training of the hand 
and eye. Then, too, drawing helps in all the other 
branches that require illustration. Moreover, if used 
in the study of the great works of art in the way here- 
inbefore mentioned, it helps to cultivate the taste and 
prepares the future workman for a more useful and 
lucrative career, inasmuch as superior taste commands 
higher wages in the finishing of all goods. 

Natural science claims a place in the elementary 
school not so much as a disciplinary study side by 
side with grammar, arithmetic, and history, as a train- 
ing in habits of observation and in the use of the tech- 
nique by which such sciences are expounded. With 
a knowledge of the technical terms and some training 
in the methods of original investigation employed in 
the sciences, the pupil broadens his views of the world 
and greatly increases his capacity to acquire new 
knowledge. For the pupil who is unacquainted with 
the technique of science has to pass without mental 
profit the numerous scientific allusions and items of 
information which more and more abound in all our 
literature, whether of an ephemeral or a permanent 
character. In an age whose proudest boast is the 



38 Committee of Fifteen. 

progress of science in all domains, there should be in 
the elementary school, from the first, a course in the 
elements of the sciences. And this is quite possible; 
for each science possesses some phases that lie very 
near to the child's life. These familiar topics furnish 
the doors through which the child enters the various 
special departments. Science, it is claimed, is nothing 
if not systematic. Indeed, science itself may be 
defined as the interpretation of each fact through all 
other facts of a kindred nature. Admitting that this 
is so, it is no less true that pedagogic method begins 
with the fragmentary knowledge possessed by the 
pupil and proceeds to organize it and build it out 
systematically in all directions. Hence any science 
may be taken up best on the side nearest the ex- 
perience of the pupil and the investigation continued 
until the other parts are reached. Thus the peda- 
gogical order is not always the logical or scientific 
order. In this respect it agrees with the order of dis- 
covery, which is usually something quite different from 
the logical order; for that is the last thing discovered. 
The natural sciences have two general divisions : one 
relating to inorganic matter, as physics and chemistry, 
and one relating to organic, as botany and zoology. 
There should be a spiral course in natural science, 
commencing each branch with the most interesting 
phases to the child. A first course should be given in 
botany, zoology, and physics, so as to treat of the 
structure and uses of familiar plants and animals, and 
the explanation of physical phenomena as seen in the 
child's playthings, domestic machines, etc. A second 
course, covering the same subjects, but laying more 
stress on classification and functions, will build on to 
the knowledge already acquired from the former 
lessons and from his recently acquired experience. A 
third course of weekly lessons, conducted by the 



Committee of Fifteen. 39 

teacher as before in a conversational style, with ex- 
periments and with a comparison of the facts of 
observation already in the possession of the children, 
will go far to helping them to an acquisition of the 
results of natural science. Those of the children 
specially gifted for observation in some one or more 
departments of nature will be stimulated and encour- 
aged to make the most of their gifts. 

In the opinion of your committee, there should be 
set apart a full hour each week for drawing and the 
same amount for oral lessons in natural science. 

The oral lessons in history have already been men- 
tioned. The spiral course, found useful in natural 
science because of the rapid change in capacity of 
comprehension by the pupil from his sixth to his four- 
teenth year, will also be best for the history course, 
which will begin with biographical adventures of in- 
terest to the child, and possessing an important his- 
torical bearing. These will proceed from the native 
land first to England, the parent country, and then to 
the classic civilizations (Greece and Rome being, so to 
speak, the grandparent countries of the American 
colonies). These successive courses of oral lessons 
adapted respectively to the child's capacity will do 
much to make the child well informed on this topic. 
Oral lessons should never be mere lectures, but more 
like Socratic dialogues, building up a systematic 
knowledge partly from what is already known, partly 
by new investigations, and partly by comparison of 
authorities. 

The best argument in favor of weekly oral lessons in 
natural science and general history is the actual experi- 
ences of teachers who have for some time used the plan. 
It hcis been found that the lessons in botany, zoology, 
and physics give the pupil much aid in learning his 
geography, and other lessons relating to nature, while 



40 Committee of Fifteen. 

the history lessons assist very much his comprehension 
of literature, and add interest to geography. 

It is understood by your Committee that the lessons 
in physiology and hygiene (with special reference to 
the effects of stimulants and narcotics) required by 
State laws should be included in this oral course in 
natural science. Manual training, so far as the theory 
and use of the tools for working in wood and iron are 
concerned, has just claims on the elementary school 
for a reason similar to that which admits natural sci- 
ence. From science have proceeded useful inventions 
for the aid of all manner of manufactures and transpor- 
tation. The child of to-day lives in a world where 
machinery is constantly at his hand. A course of 
training in wood- and iron-work, together with experi- 
mental knowledge of physics or natural philosophy, 
makes it easy for him to learn the management of such 
machines. Sewing and cookery have not the same, 
but stronger claims for a place in school. One-half 
day in each week for one-half a year each in the sev- 
enth and eighth grades will suffice for manual training, 
the sewing and cookery being studied by the girls, and 
the wood- and iron-work by the boys. It should be 
mentioned, however, that the advocates of manual 
training in iron- and wood-work recommend these 
branches for secondary schools, because of the greater 
maturity of body, and the less likelihood to acquire 
wrong habits of manipulation, in the third period of 
four years of school. 

Vocal music has long since obtained a well-estab- 
lished place in all elementary schools. The labors of 
two generations of special teachers have reduced the 
steps of instruction to such simplicity that whole classes 
may make as regular progress in reading music as in 
reading literature. 

In regard to physical culture your Committee is 



Committee of Fifteen. 41 

agreed that there should be some form of special daily 
exercises amounting in the aggregate to one hour each 
week, the same to include the main features of calis- 
thenics, and German, Swedish, or American systems 
of physical training, but not to be regarded as a sub- 
stitute for the old-fashioned recess, established to per- 
mit the free exercise of the pupils in the open air. 
Systematic physical training has for its object rather 
the will training than recreation, and this must not be 
forgotten. To go from a hard lesson to a series of cal- 
isthenic exercises is to go from one kind of will training 
to another. Exhaustion of the will should be followed 
by the caprice and wild freedom of the recess. But 
systematic physical exercise has its sufficient reason in 
its aid to a graceful use of the limbs, its development 
of muscles that are left unused or rudimentary unless 
called forth by special training, and for the help it 
gives to the teacher in the way of school discipline. 

Your Committee would mention in this connection 
instruction in morals and manners, which ought to be 
given in a brief series of lessons each year with a view 
to build up in the mind a theory of the conventionali- 
ties of polite and pure-minded society. If these lessons 
are made too long or too numerous, they are apt to 
become offensive to the child's mind. It is of course 
understood by your Committee that the substantial 
moral training of the school is performed by the disci- 
pline rather than by the instruction in ethical theory. 
The child is trained to be regular and punctual, and to 
restrain his desire to talk and whisper — in these things 
gaining self-control day by day. The essence of moral 
behavior is self-control. The school teaches good 
behavior. The intercourse of a pupil with his fellows 
without evil words or violent actions is insisted on and 
secured. The higher moral qualities of truth-telling 
and sincerity are taught in every class exercise thaf 
lays stress on accuracy of statement. 



42 Committee of Fifteen, 

Your Committee has already discussed the impor- 
tance of teaching something of algebraic processes in 
the seventh and eighth grades with the view to ob- 
taining better methods of solving problems in ad- 
vanced arithmetic ; a majority of your Committee are 
of the opinion that formal English grammar should be 
discontinued in the eighth year, and the study of 
some foreign language, preferably that of Latin, sub- 
stituted. The educational effect on an English-speak- 
ing pupil of taking up a language which, like Latin, 
uses inflections instead of prepositions, and which 
further differs from English by the order in which its 
words are arranged in the sentence, is quite marked, 
and a year of Latin places a pupil by a wide interval 
out of the range of the pupil who has continued Eng- 
lish grammar without taking up Latin. But the effect 
of the year's study of Latin increases the youth's 
power of apperception in very many directions by 
reason of the fact that so much of the English voca- 
bulary used in technical vocabularies, like those of 
geography, grammar, history, and literature, is from a 
Latin source, and besides there are so many traces in 
the form and substance of human learning of the hun- 
dreds of years when Latin was the only tongue in 
which observation and reflection could be expressed. 

Your Committee refers to the programme given 
later in this report for the details of co-ordinating 
these several branches already recommended. 

The difference between elementary and secondary studies. 

In recommending the introduction of algebraic pro- 
cesses in the seventh and eighth years — as well as in 
the recommendation just now made to introduce Latin 
in the eighth year of the elementary course — your 
Committee has come face to face with the question 



Committee of Fifteen. 43 

of the intrinsic difference between elementary and 
secondary studies. 

Custom has placed algebra, geometry, the history 
of English literature, and Latin in the rank of second- 
ary studies ; also general history, physical geography, 
and the elements of physics and chemistry. In a 
secondary course of four years trigonometry may be 
added to the mathematics ; some of the sciences 
whose elements are used in physical geography may 
be taken up separately in special treatises, as geology, 
botany, and physiology. There may be also a study 
of whole works of English authors, as Shakespeare, 
Milton, and Scott. Greek is also begun in the second 
or third year of the secondary course. This is the 
custom in most public high schools. But in private 
secondary schools Latin is begun earlier, and so, too, 
Greek, algebra, and geometry. Sometimes geometry 
is taken up before algebra, as is the custom in German 
schools. These arrangements are based partly on 
tradition, partly on the requirements of higher insti- 
tutions for admission, and partly on the ground that 
the intrinsic difficulties in these studies have fixed 
their places in the course of study. Of those who 
claim that there is an intrinsic reason for the selection 
and order of these studies, some base their conclu- 
sions on experience in conducting pupils through them, 
others on psychological grounds. The latter contend, 
for example, that algebra deals with general forms of 
calculation, while arithmetic deals with the particular 
instances of calculation. Whatever deals with the 
particular instance is relatively elementary, whatever 
deals with the general form is relatively secondary. 
In the expression a-|-b = c algebra indicates the 
form of all addition. This arithmetic cannot do, ex- 
cept in the form of a verbal rule describing the steps 
of the operation : its examples are all special instances 



44 Committee of Fifteen. 

falling under the general form given in algebra. If, 
therefore, arithmetic is an elementary branch, algebra 
is relatively to it a secondary branch. So, too, geom- 
etry, thoUi^h not directly based on arithmetic, has to 
presuppose an acquaintance with it when it reduces 
spatial functions into numerical forms, as, for example, 
in the measurement of surfaces and solids, and in 
ascertaining the ratio of the circumference to the 
radius, and of the hypothenuse to the two other sides 
of the right-angled triangle. Geometry, moreover, 
deals with necessary relations ; its demonstrations 
reach universal and necessary conclusions, holding 
good not merely in such material shapes as we have 
met with in actual experience, but with all examples 
possible, past, present, or future. Such knowledge 
transcending experience is intrinsically secondary as 
compared with the first acquaintance with geometric 
shapes in concrete examples. 

In the case of geometry it is claimed by some that 
what is called " inventional geometry " may be properly 
introduced into the elementary grades. By this some 
mean the practice with blocks in the shape of geo- 
metric solids, and the construction of different figures 
from the same ; others mean the rediscovery by the 
pupil for himself of the necessary relations demon- 
strated by Euclid. The former — exercises of con- 
struction with blocks — are well enough in the kinder- 
garten, where they assist in learning number, as well 
as in the analysis of material forms. But its educa- 
tional value is small for pupils advanced into the use 
of books. The original discovery of Euclid's demon- 
strations, on the other hand, belongs more properly to 
higher education than to elementary. In the geo- 
metrical text-books, recently introduced into secondary 
schools, there is so much of original demonstration re- 
quired that the teacher is greatly embarrassed on 



Committee of Fifteen. 45 

account of the differences in native capacity for mathe- 
matics that develop among the pupils of the same class 
in solving the problems of invention. A few gifted 
pupils delight in the inventions, and develop rapidly 
in power, while the majority of the class use too much 
time over them, and thus rob the other branches of the 
course of study, or else fall into the bad practice of 
getting help from others in the preparation of their 
lessons. A few in every class fall hopelessly behind 
and are discouraged. The result is an attempt on the 
part of the teacher to correct the evil by requiring a 
more thorough training in the mathematical studies 
preceding, and the consequent delay of secondary 
pupils in the lower grades of the course in order to 
bring up their " inventional geometry." Many, dis- 
couraged, fail to go on ; many more fail to reach higher 
studies because unable to get over the barrier unnec- 
essarily placed before them by teachers who desire that 
no pupils except natural geometricians shall enter into 
higher studies. 

Physical geography in its scientific form is very 
properly made a part of the secondary course of study. 
The pupil in his ninth year of work can profitably ac- 
quire the scientific technique of geology, botany, 
zoology, meteorology, and ethnology, and in the follow- 
ing years take up those sciences separately and push 
them further, using the method of actual investigation. 
The subject-matter of physical geography is of very 
high interest to the pupil who has studied geography 
in the elementary grades after an approved method. 
It takes up the proximate grounds and causes for the 
elements of difference on the earth's surface, already 
become familiar to him through his elementary studies, 
and pushes them back into deeper, simpler, and more 
satisfactory principles. This study performs the work 
also of correlating the sciences that relate to organic 



46 Committee of Fifteen. 

nature by showing their respective uses to man. From 
the gUmpses which the pupil gets of mineralogy, 
geology, botany, zoology, ethnology, and meteorology 
in their necessary connection as geographic conditions 
he sees the scope and grand significance of those sep- 
arate inquiries. A thirst is aroused in him to pursue 
his researches into their domains. He sees, too, the 
borderlands in which new discoveries may be made by 
the enterprising explorer. 

Physics, including what was called until recently 
" natural philosophy," after Newton's Frincipia (Fhil- 
osophicB naturalis principia mathematicd)^ implies more 
knowledge of mathematics for its thorough discussion 
than the secondary pupil is likely to possess. In fact, 
the study of this branch in college thirty years ago was 
crippled by the same cause. It should follow the 
completion of analytical geometry. Notwithstanding 
this, a very profitable study of this subject may be 
made in the second year of the high school or pre- 
paratory school, although the formulas can then be 
understood in so far as they imply elementary algebra 
only. The pupil does not get the most exact notions 
of the quantitative laws that rule matter in its states of 
motion and equilibrium, but he does see the action of 
forces as qualitative elements of phenomena, and 
understand quite well the mechanical inventions by 
which men subdue them for his use and safety. Even 
in the elementary grades the pupil can seize very many 
of these qualitative aspects and learn the explanation 
of the mechanical phenomena of nature, and other 
applications of the same principles in invention, as, 
for example, gravitation in falling bodies : its measure- 
ment by the scales ; the part it plays in the pump, the 
barometer, the pendulum ; cohesion in mud, clay, glue, 
paste, mortar, cement, etc. ; capillary attraction in 
lamp-wicks, sponges, sugar, the sap in plants ; the ap- 



Committee of Fifteen. 47 

plications of lifting by the lever, pulley, inclined plane, 
wedge, and screw ; heat in the sun, combustion, fric- 
tion, steam, thermometer, conduction, clothing, cook- 
ing, etc. ; the phenomena of light, electricity, magnet- 
ism, and the explanation of such mechanical devices 
as spectacles, telescopes, microscopes, prisms, photo- 
graphic cameras, electric tension in bodies, lightning, 
mariner's compass, horseshoe magnet, the telegraph, 
the dynamo. This partially qualitative study of forces 
and mechanical inventions has the educational effect 
of enlightening the pupil, and emancipating him from 
the network of superstition that surrounds him in the 
child world, partly of necessity and partly by reason of 
the illiterate adults that he sometimes meets with in 
the persons of nurses, servants, and tradespeople, 
whose occupations have more attraction for him than 
those of cultured people. The fairy world is a world 
of magic, of immediate interventions of supernatural 
spiritual beings, and while this is proper enough for 
the child up to the time of the school, and in a lessen- 
ing degree for some time after, it is only negative and 
harmful in adult manhood and womanhood. It pro- 
duces arrested development of powers of observation 
and reflection in reference to phenomena, and stops 
the growth of the soul at the infantine stage of develop- 
ment. Neither is this infantine stage of wonder and 
magic more religious than the stage of disillusion 
through the study of mathematics and physics. It is 
the arrest of religious development, also, at the stage of 
fetichism. The highest religion, that of pure Christian- 
ity, sees in the world infinite mediations, all for the pur- 
pose of developing independent individuality ; the per- 
fection of human souls not only in one kind of piety, 
namely, that of the heart, but in the piety of the intel- 
lect that beholds truth, the piety of the will that does 
good deeds wisely, the piety of the senses that sees the 



48 Committee of Fifteen. 

beautiful and realizes it in works of art. This is the 
Christian idea of divine Providence as contrasted with 
the heathen idea of that Providence, and the study of 
natural philosophy is an essential educational requisite 
in its attainment, although a negative means. Of 
course there is danger of replacing the spiritual idea of 
the divine by the dynamical or mechanical idea, and 
thus arresting the mind at the stage of pantheism in- 
stead of fetichism. But this danger can be avoided 
by further education through secondary into higher 
education, whose entire spirit and method are compara- 
tive and philosophical in the best sense of the term. 
For higher education seems to have as its province the 
correlation of the several branches of human learning 
in the unity of the spiritual view furnished by religion 
to our civilization. By it one learns to see each branch, 
each science or art or discipline, in the light of all the 
others. This higher or comparative view is essential 
to any completeness of education, for it alone prevents 
the one-sidedness of hobbies, or " fads," as they are 
called in the slang of the day. It prevents also the 
bad effects that flow from the influence of what are 
termed " self-educated men," who for the most part 
carry up with them elementary methods of study, or at 
best, secondary methods, which accentuate the facts 
and relations of natural and spiritual phenomena, but 
do not deal with their higher correlations. The com- 
parative method cannot, in fact, be well introduced 
until the student is somewhat advanced, and has already 
completed his elementary course of study dealing with 
the immediate aspects of the world, and his secondary 
course dealing with the separate formal and dynamical 
aspects that lie next in order behind the facts of first 
observation. Higher education in a measure unifies 
these separate formal and dynamic aspects, corrects 
their one-sidedness, and prevents the danger of what 



Committee of Fifteen. 49 

is so often noted in the self-educated men who unduly 
exaggerate some one of the subordinate aspects of the 
world and make it a sort of first principle. 

Here your Committee finds in its way the question of 
the use of the full scientific method in the teaching of 
science in the elementary school. The true method has 
been called the method of investigation, but that method 
as used by the child is only a sad caricature of the method 
used by the mature scientific man, who has long since 
passed through the fragmentary observation and reflec- 
tion that prevail in the period of childhood, as well as 
the tendencies to exaggeration of the importance of 
one or another branch of knowledge at the expense of 
the higher unity that correlates all; an exaggeration 
that manifests itself in the possession and use of a 
hobby. The ideal scientific man has freed himself 
from obstacles of this kind, whether psychological or 
objective. What astronomical observers call the sub- 
jective coefficient must be ascertained and eliminated 
from the record that shows beginnings, endings, and 
rates. There is a possibility of perfect specialization 
in a scientific observer only after the elementary and 
secondary attitudes of mind have been outgrown. An 
attempt to force the child into the full scientific method 
by specialization would cause an arrest of his develop- 
ment in the other branches of human learning outside 
of his specialty. He could not properly inventory the 
data of his own special sphere unless he knew how 
to recognize the defining limits or boundaries that sep- 
arate his province from its neighbors. The early days 
of science abounded in examples of confusion of prov- 
inces in the inventories of their data. It is difficult, 
even now, to decide where physics and chemistry leave 
off, and biology begins. 

Your Committee does not attempt to state the exact 
proportion in which the child, at his various degrees 



5© Committee of Fifteen, 

of advancement, may be able to dispense with the guid- 
ing influence of teacher and text-book in his investiga- 
tions, but they protest strongly against the illusion 
under which certain zealous advocates of the early 
introduction of scientific method seem to labor. They 
ignore in their zeal the deduction that is to be made 
for the guiding hand of the teacher, who silently fur- 
nishes to the child the experience that he lacks, and 
quietly directs his special attention to this or to that 
phase, and prevents him from hasty or false generaliza 
tion as well as from undue exaggeration of single facts 
or principles. Here the teacher adds the needed 
scientific outlook which the child lacks, but which the 
mature scientist possesses for himself. 

It is contended by some that the scientific frame of 
mind is adapted only to science, but not to art, litera- 
ture, and religion, which have something essential that 
science does not reach ; not because of the incomplete- 
ness of the sciences themselves, but because of the 
attitude of the mind assumed in the observation of 
nature. In analytic investigation there is isolation of 
parts one from another, with a view to find the sources 
of the influences which produce the phenomena shown 
in the object. The mind brings everything to the test 
of this idea. Every phenomenon that exists comes 
from beyond itself, and analysis will be able to trace 
the source. 

Now, this frame of mind, which insists on a foreign 
origin of all that goes to constitute an object, debars 
itself in advance from the province of religion, art, and 
literature as well as of philosophy. For self-determina- 
tion, personal activity, is the first principle assumed by 
religion, and it is tacitly assumed by art and literature, 
Classic and Christian. The very definition of philoso- 
phy implies this, for it is the attempt to explain the 
world by the assumption of a first principle, and to 



Committee of Fifteen. 5 1 

show that all classes of objects imply that principle as 
ultimate presupposition. According to this view it is 
important not to attempt to hasten the use of a strictly 
scientific method on the part of the child. In his first 
years he is acquiring the results of civilization rather 
as an outfit of habits, usages, and traditions than as a 
scientific discovery. He cannot be expected to stand 
over against the culture of his time, and challenge one 
and all of its conventionalities to justify themselves 
before his reason. His reason is too weak. He is 
rather in the imitation stage of mind than in that of criti- 
cism. He will not reach the comparative or critical 
method until the era of higher education. 

However this may be, it is clear that the educational 
value of science and its method is a very important 
question, and that on it depends the settlement of the 
question where specialization may begin. To com- 
mence the use of the real scientific method would 
imply a radical change also in methods from the begin- 
ning. This may be realized by considering the hold 
which even the kindergarten retains upon symbolism 
and upon art and literature. But in the opinion of a 
majority of your Committee natural science itself 
should be approached, in the earliest years of the ele- 
mentary school, rather in the form of results with 
glimpses into the methods by which these results were 
reached. In the last two years (the seventh and eighth) 
there may be some strictness of scientific form and an 
exhibition of the method of discovery. The pupil, too, 
may to some extent put this method in practice him- 
self. In the secondary school there should be some 
laboratory work. But the pupil cannot be expected to 
acquire for himself fully the scientific method of deal- 
ing with nature until the second part of higher educa- 
tion — its post-graduate work. Nevertheless this good 
should be kept in view from the first year of the ele- 



52 Committee of Fifteen. 

mentary school, and there should be a gradual and 
continual approach to it. 

In the study of general history appears another 
branch of the secondary course. History of the 
native land is assumed to be an elementary study. 
History of the world is certainly a step further away 
from the experience of the child. It is held by some 
teachers to be in accordance with proper method to 
begin with the foreign relations of one's native land 
and to work outward to the world-history. The Euro- 
pean relations involved in the discovery and coloniza- 
tion of America furnish the only explanation to a mul- 
titude of questions that the pupil has started in the 
elementary school. He should move outward from 
what he has already learned, by the study of a new 
concentric circle of grounds and reasons, according to 
this view. This, however, is not the usual course 
taken. On beginning secondary history the pupil is 
set back face to face with the period of tradition, just 
when historic traces first make their appearance. 
He is, by this arrangement, broken off from the 
part of history that he has become acquainted with, 
and made to grapple with that period which has no re- 
lation to his previous investigations. It is to be said, 
however, that general history lays stress on the relig- 
ious thread of connection, though less now than for- 
merly. The world history is a conception of the great 
Christian thinker, St. Augustine, who held that the 
world and its history is a sort of antiphonic hymn, in 
which God reads his counsels, and the earth and man 
read the responses. He induced Orosius, his pupil, 
to sketch a general history in the spirit of his view. 
It was natural that the Old Testament histories, and 
especially the chapters of Genesis, should furnish the 
most striking part of its contents. This general his- 
tory was connected with religion, and brought closer 



Committee of Fifteen. 53 

to the experience of the individual than the history of 
his own people. To commence history with the Gar- 
den of Eden, the Fall of Man, and the Noachian 
Deluge was to begin with what was most familiar to all 
minds, and most instructive, because it concerned 
most nearly the conduct of life. Thus religion fur- 
nished the apperceptive material by which the early 
portions of history were recognized, classified, and 
made a part of experience. 

Now that studies in archaeology, especially those in 
the Nile and Euphrates valleys, are changing the chro- 
nologies and the records of early times and adding 
new i?ecords of the past, bringing to light national 
movements and collisions of peoples, together with 
data by which to determine the status of their indus- 
trial civilization, their religious ideas, and the form of 
their literature and art, the concentric arrangement of 
all this material around the history of the chosen peo- 
ple as a nucleus is no longer possible. The question 
has arisen^ therefore, whether general history should 
not be rearranged for the secondary school, and made 
to connect with American history for apperceptive 
material rather than with Old Testament history. To 
this it has been replied with force that the idea of a 
world history, as St. Augustine conceived it, is the 
noblest educative ideal ever connected with the subject 
of history. Future versions of general history will not 
desert this standpoint, we are told, even if they take as 
their basis that of ethnology and anthropology, for 
these, too, will exhibit a plan in human history — an 
educative principle that leads nations toward freedom 
and science, because the Creator of nature has made 
it, in its fundamental constitution, an evolution or pro- 
gressive development of individuality. Thus the idea 
of divine Providence is retained, though made more 
comprehensive by bringing the whole content of nat- 
ural laws within his will as his method of work. 



54 Committee of Fifteen. 

These considerations, we are reminded by the 
partisans of humanity studies, point back to the edu- 
cative value of history as corrective of the one-sided- 
ness of the method of science. Science seeks explana- 
tion in the mechanical conditions of, and impulses 
received from, the environment, while history keeps its 
gaze fixed on human purposes, and studies the genesis 
of national actions through the previous stages of feel- 
ings, convictions, and conscious ideas. In history the 
pupil has for his object self-activity, reaction against 
environment, instead of mechanism, or activity through 
another. 

The history of English literature is another study of 
the secondary school. It is very properly placed 
beyond the elementary school, for as taught it consists 
largely of the biographies of men of letters. The 
pupils who have not yet learned any great work of 
literature should not be pestered with literary 
biography, for at that stage the greatness of the men 
of letters cannot be seen. Plutarch makes great 
biographies because he shows heroic struggles and 
great deeds. The heroism of artists and poets con- 
sists in sacrificing all for the sake of their creations. 
The majority of them come oif sadly at the hands of 
the biographer, for the reason that the very sides of 
their lives are described which they had shghted and 
neglected for the sake of the Muses. The prophets of 
Israel did not live in city palaces, but in caves ; they ' 
did not wear fine raiment, nor feed sumptuously, nor 
conform to the codes of polite society. They were no 
courtiers when they approached the king. They 
neglected all the other institutions — family, produc- 
tive industry, and state — for the sake of one, the 
Church, and even that not the established ceremonial 
of the people, but a higher and more direct communing 
with Jehovah, So with artists and men of letters, it is 



Committee of Fifteen. 55 

more or less the case, that the institutional side of 
their lives is neglected, or unsymmetrical, or if this is 
not the case, it will be found prosaic and uneventful, 
throwing no light on their matchless productions. 

For these reasons, should not the present use of 
literary biography as it exists in secondary schools, 
and is gradually making its way into elementary 
schools, be discouraged, and the time now given to it 
devoted to the study of literary works of art ? It will 
be admitted that the exposure of the foibles of artists 
has an immoral tendency on youth : for example, one 
affects to be a poet, and justifies laxity and self- 
indulgence through the example of Byron. Those who 
support this view hold that we should not dignify the 
immoral and defective side of life by making it a 
branch of study in school. 

Correlation by synthesis of studies. 

Your Committee would mention another sense in 
which the expression correlation of studies is some- 
times used. It is held by advocates of an artificial 
centre of the course of study. They use, for example, 
De Foe's Robinson Crusoe for a reading exercise, and 
connect with it the lessons in geography and arith- 
metic. It has been pointed out by critics of this 
method that there is always danger of covering up the 
literary features of the reading matter under acces- 
sories of mathematics and natural science. If the 
material for other branches is to be sought for in con- 
nection with the literary exercise, it will distract the 
attention from the poetic unity. On the other hand, 
arithmetic and geography cannot be unfolded freely 
and comprehensively if they are to wait on the 
opportunities afforded in a poem or novel for their 
development. A correlation of this kind, instead of 



56 Committee of Fifteen. 

being a deeper correlation, such as is found in all 
parts of human learning by the studies of the college 
and university, is rather a shallow and uninteresting 
kind of correlation, that reminds one of the system of 
mnemonics, or artificial memory, which neglects the 
association of facts and events with their causes and 
the history of their evolution, and looks for unessen- 
tial quips, puns, or accidental suggestions with a view 
to strengthening the memory. The effect of this is to 
weaken the power of systematic thinking which deals 
with essential relations, and substitute for it a chaotic 
memory that ties together things through false and 
seeming relations, not of the things and events, but of 
the words that denote them. 

The correlation of geography and arithmetic and 
history in and through the unity of a work of fiction 
is at best an artificial correlation, which will stand in 
the way of the true objective correlation. It is a 
temporary scaffolding made for school purposes. In- 
struction should avoid such temporary structures as 
much as possible, and when used they should be only 
used for the day, and not for the year, because of the 
danger of building up an apperceptive centre in the 
child's mind that will not harmonize with the true 
apperceptive centre required by the civilization. The 
story of Robinson Crusoe has intense interest to the 
child as a lesson in sociology, showing him the help- 
lessness of isolated man and the re-enforcement that 
comes to him through society. It shows the impor- 
tance of the division of labor. All children should 
read this book in the later years of the elementary 
course, and a few profitable discussions may- be had 
in school regarding its significance. But De Foe 
painted in it only the side of adventure that he found 
in his countrymen in his epoch, England after the 
defeat of the Armada having taken up a career of 



Committee of Fifteen, 57 

conquest on the seas, ending by colonization and a 
world commerce. The liking for adventure continues 
to this day among all Anglo-Saxon peoples, and be- 
yond other nationalities there is in English-speaking 
populations a delight in building up civilization from 
the very foundation. This is only, however, one 
phase of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Consequently the 
history of Crusoe is not a proper centre for a year's 
study in school. It omits cities, governments, the 
world commerce, the international process, the Church, 
the newspaper and book from view, and they are not 
even reflected in it. 

Your Committee w^uld call attention in this con- 
nection to the importance of the pedagogical princi- 
ple of analysis and isolation as preceding synthesis 
and correlation. There should be rigid isolation of 
the elements of each branch for the purpose of get- 
ting a clear conception of what is individual and pe- 
culiar in a special province of learning. Otherwise 
one will not gain from each its special contribution 
to the whole. That there is some danger from the 
kind of correlation that essays to teach all branches 
in each will be apparent from this point of view. 

III. THE SCHOOL PROGRAMME. 

In order to find a place in the elementary school 
for the several branches recommended in this report, 
it will be necessary to use economically the time 
allotted for the school term, which is about two hun- 
dred days, exclusive of vacations and holidaysc Five 
days per week and five hours of actual school work 
or a little less per day, after excluding recesses for 
recreation, give about twenty-five hours per week. 
There should be, as far as possible, alternation of 
study-hours and recitations (the word recitation being 



5^ Committee of Fifteen. 

used in the United States for class exercise or lesson 
conducted by the teacher and requiring the critical 
attention of the entire class). Those studies requir- 
ing the clearest thought should be taken up, as a usual 
thing, in the morning session, say arithmetic the sec- 
ond half hour of the morning and grammar the half- 
hour next succeeding the morning recess for recrea- 
tion in the open air. By some who are anxious to 
prevent study at home, or at least to control its amount 
it is thought advisable to place the arithmetic lesson 
after the grammar lesson, so that the study learned at 
home will be grammar instead of arithmetic. It is 
found by experience that if mathematical problems are 
taken home for solution two bad habits arise ; namely, 
in one case, the pupil gets assistance from his parents 
or others, and thereby loses to some extent his own 
power of overcoming difficulties by brave and persist- 
ent attacks unaided by others; the other evil is a 
habit of consuming long hours in the preparation of a 
lesson that should be prepared in thirty minutes, if 
all the powers of mind are fresh and at command. 
An average child may spend three hours in the prep- 
aration of an arithmetic lesson. Indeed, in repeated 
efforts to solve one of the so-called "conundrums," a 
whole family may spend the entire evening. One of 
the unpleasant results of the next day is that the 
teacher who conducts the lesson never knows the 
exact capacity and rate of progress of his pupils ; in 
the recitation he probes the knowledge and prepara- 
tion of the pupil, plus an unknown amount of prepara- 
tory work borrowed from parents and others. He 
even increases the length of the lessons, and requires 
more work at home, when the amount already exceeds 
the unaided capacity of the pupil. 

The lessons should be arranged so as to bring in 
such exercises as furnish relief from intellectual ten- 



Committee of Fifteen. 59 

sion between others that make large demands on the 
thinking powers. Such exercises as singing and cal- 
isthenics, writing and drawing, also reading, are of the 
nature of a relief from those recitations that tax the 
memory, critical alertness, and introspection, like 
arithmetic, grammar, and history. 

Your Committee has not been able to agree on the 
question whether pupils who leave school early should 
have a course of study different from the course of those 
who are to continue on into secondary and higher work. 
It is contended, on the one hand, that those who leave 
early should have a more practical course, and that they 
should dispense with those studies that seem to be in 
the nature of preparatory work for secondary and 
higher education. Such studies as algebra and Latin, 
for example, should not be taken up unless the pupil 
expects to pursue the same for a sufficient time to 
complete the secondary course. It is replied, on the 
other hand, that it is best to have one course for all, 
because any school education is at best but an initia- 
tion for the pupil into the art of learning, and that 
wherever he leaves off in his school course he should 
continue, by the aid of the public library and home 
study, in the work of mastering science and literature. 
It is further contended that a brief course in higher 
studies, like Latin and algebra, instead of being use- 
less, is of more value than any elementary studies that 
might replace them. The first ten lessons in algebra 
give the pupil the fundamental idea of the general ex- 
pression of arithmetical solutions by means of letters 
and other symbols. Six months' study of it gives him 
the power to use the method in stating the manifold 
conditions of a problem in partnership, or in ascer- 
taining a value that depends on several transforma- 
tions of the data given. It is claimed, indeed, that 
the first few lessons in any branch are relatively of 



6o Committee of Fifteen. 

more educational value than an equal number of sub- 
sequent lessons, because the fundamental ideas and 
principles of the new study are placed at the begin- 
ning. In Latin, for instance, the pupil learns in his 
first week's study the, to him, strange phenomenon of 
a language that performs by inflections what his own 
language performs by the use of prepositions and 
auxiliaries. He is still more surprised to find that the 
order of words in a sentence is altogether different 
in Roman usage from that to which he is accus- 
tomed. He further begins to recognize in the Latin 
words many roots or stems which are employed to de- 
note immediate sensuous objects, while they have been 
adopted into his English tongue to signify fine 
shades of distinction in thought or feeling. By these 
three things his powers of observation in matters of 
language are armed, as it were, with new faculties. 
Nothing that he has hitherto learned in grammar is so 
radical and far-reaching as what he learns in his first 
week's study of Latin. The Latin arrangement of 
words in a sentence indicates a different order of men- 
tal arrangement in the process of apprehension and 
expression of thought. This arrangement is rendered 
possible by declensions. This amounts to attaching 
prepositions to the ends of the words, which they thus 
convert into adjectival or adverbial modifiers ; whereas 
the separate prepositions of the English must indicate 
by their position in the sentence their grammatical re- 
lation. These observations, and the new insight into 
the etymology of English words having a Latin deriv- 
ation, are of the nature of mental seeds which will 
grow and bear fruit throughout life in the better com- 
mand of one's native tongue. All this will come from 
a very brief time devoted to Latin in school. 



Committee of Fifteen. 6i 

Amount of time for each branch. 

Your Committee recommends that an hour of sixty 
minutes each week be assigned in the programme for 
each of the following subjects throughout the eight 
years : physical culture, vocal music, oral lessons in 
natural science (hygiene to be included among the 
topics under this head), oral lessons in biography and 
general history, and that the same amount of time 
each week shall be devoted to drawing from the second 
year to the eighth inclusive; to manual train ng during 
the seventh and eighth years so as to include sewing 
and cookery for the girls, and work in wood and iron 
for the boys. 

Your Committee recommends that reading be given 
at least one lesson each day for the entire eight years, 
it being understood, however, that there shall be two 
or more lessons each day in reading in the first and 
second years, in which the recitation is necessarily very 
short, because of the inability of the pupil to give con- 
tinued close attention, and because he has little power 
of applying himself to the work of preparing lessons 
by himself. In the first three years the reading should 
be limited to pieces in the colloquial style, but selec- 
tions from the classics of the language in prose and in 
poetry shall be read to the pupil from time to time, 
and discussions made of such features of the selec- 
tions read as may interest the pupils. After the third 
year your Committee believes that the reading lesson 
should be given to selections from classic authors of 
English, and that the work of the recitation should be 
divided between (a) the elocution, Q?) the grammatical 
peculiarities of the language, including spelling, defini- 
tions, syntactical construction, punctuation, and figures 
of prosody, and {c) the literary contents, including the 
main and accessory ideas, the emotions painted, the 



62 Committee of Fifteen. 

deeds described, the devices of style to produce a 
strong impression on the reader. Your Committee 
wishes to lay emphasis on the importance of the last 
item, — that of literary study, — which should consume 
more and more of the time of the recitation from 
grade to grade in the period from the fourth to the 
eighth year. In the fourth year and previously the 
first item — that of elocution, to secure distinct enun- 
ciation and correct pronunciation — should be most 
prominent. In the fifth and sixth years the second 
item — that of spelling, defining, and punctuation — 
should predominate slightly over the other two items. 
In the years from the fifth to the eighth there should 
be some reading of entire stories, such as Gulliver's 
Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Rip Van Winkle, The Lady 
of the Lake, Hiawatha, and similar stories adapted in 
style and subject-matter to the capacity of the pupils. 
An hour should be devoted each week to conversa 
tions on the salient points of the story, its literary and 
ethical bearings. 

Your Committee agrees in the opinion that in teach- 
ing language care should be taken that the pupil prac- 
tices much in writing exercises and original composi- 
tions. At first the pupil will use only his colloquial 
vocabulary, but as he gains command of the technical 
vocabularies of geography, arithmetic, and history, and 
learns the higher literary vocabulary of his language, 
he will extend his use of words accordingly. Daily 
from the first year the child will prepare some lesson 
or portion of a lesson in writing. Your Committee has 
included under the head of oral grammar (from the 
first to the middle of the fifth year) one phase of this 
written work devoted to the study of the literary form 
and the technicalities of composition in such exercises 
as letter writing, written reviews of the several 
branches studied, reports of the oral lessons in natural 



Committee of Fifteen. 63 

science and history, paraphrases of the poems and 
prose literature of the readers, and finally composi- 
tions or written essays on suitable themes assigned by 
the teacher, but selected from the fields of knowledge 
studied in school. Care should be taken to criticise 
all paraphrases of poetry in respect to the good or bad 
taste shown in the choice of words ; parodies should 
never be permitted. 

It is thought by your Committee that the old style 
of composition writing was too formal. It was kept 
too far away from the other work of the pupil. Instead 
of giving a written account of what he had learned in 
arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, and natural 
science, the pupil attempted artificial descriptions and 
reflections on such subjects as " Spring," '* Happiness," 
''Perseverance," "Friendship," or something else out- 
side of the line of his school studies. 

Your Committee has already expressed its opinion 
that a good English style is not to be acquired by the 
study of grammar so much as by familiarity with great 
masterpieces of literature. We especially recommend 
that pupils who have taken up the fourth and fifth 
readers, containing the selections from great authors, 
should often be required to make written paraphrases 
of prose or poetic models of style, using their own 
vocabulary to express the thoughts so far as possible, 
and borrowing the recherche words and phrases of the 
author, where their own resources fail them. In this 
way the pupil learns to see what the great author has 
done to enrich the language and to furnish adequate 
means of expression for what could not be presented 
in words before, or at least not in so happy a manner. 

Your Committee believes that every recitation is, in 
one aspect of it, an attempt to express the thoughts 
and information of the lesson in the pupil's own words, 
and thus an initial exercise in composition. The regu- 



64 Committee of Fifteen. 

lar weekly written review of the important topics in 
the several branches studied is a more elaborate exer- 
cise in composition, the pupil endeavoring to collect 
what he knows and to state it systematically and in 
proper language. The punctuation, spelling, syntax, 
penmanship, choice of words, and style should not, it 
is true, be made a matter of criticism in connection 
with the other lessons, but only in the language lesson 
proper. But the pupil will learn language, all the 
same, by the written and oral recitations. The oral 
grammar lessons, from the first year to the middle of 
the fifth year, should deal chiefly with the use of lan- 
guage, gradually introducing the grammatical tech- 
nique as it is needed to describe accurately the correct 
forms and the usages violated. 

Your Committee believes that there is some danger 
of wasting the time of the pupil in these oral and writ- 
ten language lessons in the first four years by confin- 
ing the work of the pupil to the expression of ordinary 
commonplace ideas not related to the subjects of his 
other lessons, especially when the expression is con- 
fined to the colloquial vocabulary. Such training has 
been severely and justly condemned as teaching what 
is called prating or gabbling, rather than a noble use 
of English speech. It is clear that the pupil should 
have a dignified and worthy subject of composition, 
and what is so good for his purpose as the themes he 
has tried to master in his regular lessons ? The read- 
ing lessons will give matter for literary style, the geog- 
raphy for scientific style, and the arithmetic for a busi- 
ness style ; for all styles should be learned. 

Your Committee recommends that selected lists of 
words difficult to spell be made from the reading les- 
sons and mastered by frequent writing and oral spel- 
ling during the fourth, fifth, and sixth years. 

Your Committee recommends that the use of a text- 



Committee of Fifteen, 65 

book in grammar begin with the second half cf the 
fifth year, and continue until the beginning of the 
study of Latin in the eighth grade, and that one daily 
lesson of twenty-five or thirty minutes be devoted to it. 

For Latin we recommend one daily lesson of thirty 
minutes for the eighth year. For arithmetic we rec- 
ommend number work from the first year to the eighth, 
one lesson each day, but the use of the text-book in 
number should not, in our opinion, begin until the first 
quarter of the third year. We recommend that the 
applications of elementary algebra to arithmetic, as 
hereinbefore explained, be substituted for pure arith- 
metic in the seventh and eighth years, a daily lesson 
being given. 

Your Committee recommends that penmanship as a 
separate branch be taught in the first six years at least 
three lessons per week. 

Geography, in the opinion of your Committee, 
should begin with oral lessons in the second year, and 
with a text-book in the third quarter of the third year, 
and be continued to the close of the sixth year with 
one lesson each day, and in the seventh and eighth 
years with three lessons per week. 

History of the United States with the use of a text- 
book, your Committee recommends for the seventh 
and the first half of the eighth year, one lesson each 
day ; the Constitution of the United States for the 
third quarter of the eighth year. 

The following schedule will show the number of les- 
sons per week for each quarter of each year : — 

Reading. Eight years, with daily lessons. 

Penmanship. Six years, ten lessons per week for first two 

years, five for third and fourth, and three for fifth and 

sixth. 
Spelling Lists. Fourth, fifth, and sixth years, four lessons 

per week. 



66 Committee of Fifteen. 

Grammar. Oral, with composition or dictation, first year to 
middle of fifth year, text-book from middle of fifth year 
to close of seventh year, five lessons per week. (Com- 
position writing should be included under this head. 
But the written examinations on the several branches 
should be counted under the head of composition work.) 

Latin or French or German. Eighth year, five lessons per 
week. 

Arithmetic. Oral first and second year, text-book third to 
sixth year, five lessons per week. 

Algebra. Seventh and eighth years, five lessons per week. 

Geography. Oral lessons second year to middle of third 
year, text-book from middle of third year, five lessons 
weekly to seventh year, and three lessons to close 
of eighth. 

Natural Science and Hygiene. Sixty minutes per week, 
eight years. 

History of United States. Five hours per week seventh 
year and first half of eighth year. 

Constitution of United States. Third quarter in the eighth 
year. 

General History and Biography. Oral lessons, sixty min- 
utes a week, eight years. 

Physical Culture. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Vocal Music. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Drawing. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Manual Training, Sewing, and Cooking. One-half day each 
week in seventh and eighth years. 

Your Committee recommends recitations of fifteen 
minutes in length in the first and second years, of 
twenty minutes in length in the third and fourth years, 
of twenty-five minutes in the fifth and sixth years, and 
of thirty minutes in the seventh and eighth. 

The results of this programme show for the first and 
second years twenty lessons a week of fifteen minutes 
each, besides seven other exercises occupying an aver- 
age of twelve minutes apiece each day ; the total 
amount of time occupied in the continuous attention of 



Committee of Fifteen. 67 

the recitation or class exercises being twelve hours, or 
an average of two hours and twenty-four minutes per 
day. 

For the third year twenty lessons a week of twenty 
minutes each, and five general exercises taking up five 
hours a week, or an average of one hour per day, giv- 
ing an average time per day of two hours and twenty 
minutes for class recitations or exercises. 

In the fourth the recitations increase to twenty-four 
(by reason of four extra lessons in spelling) and the 
time occupied in recitations and exercises to thirteen 
hours and an average per day of two hours thirty-six 
minutes. 



68 



Committee of Fifteen, 



Branches. 


year 


id id 
year year 


year 


year 


6th 
year 


jih 
year 


%th 
year 


Reading 


10 lessons a 
week 


5 lessons a week 


Writing . . . 


10 lessons a 
week 


5 lessons a 
week 


3 lessons a 
week 




Spelling 

lists 






4 lessons a week 

1 


English 
Grammar 


Oral, with composition lessons 


5 lessons a week 
with text-book 




Latin 














5 les- 
sons 


Arithmetic . 


Oral, 60 min- 
utes a week 


5 lessons a week with text-book 






Algebra 


1 1 
1 


5 lessons a 
1 week 


i-„„^,„u,r Oral, 60 minutes a 
Geography.. ^^^^ 


*5 lessons a week with 3 lessons a 
text-book week 


Natural 
Science 
4-Hygiene 


Sixty minutes a week 


U. S. His- 
tory 






1 




5 lessons a 
week 


U. S. Con- 
stitution 


1 

1 1 




>l 



General 

History 



Oral, sixty minutes a week 



Physical 

Culture 



Sixty minutes a week 



Vocal Music 



Sixty minutes a week 
divided into 4 lessons 



Drawing. 



Sixty minutes a week 



Man'l Train. 

or Sewing-}- 

Cookery 



One- half day 
each week 



Number of 
Lessons 



20+7 
daily 



20+7 
daily 



20+5 
daily 
exer 



24+S 
daily 



27-f-S 
daily 



27+5 
daily 



23+6 
daily 



23+6 
daily 
exer. 



Total Hours 
of Recitat'ns 



I II I I 

12 I 12 I 11% I 13 I 16% I 16K 



17^ 



^1% 



Length of 
Recitations 



15 mm I 15 mm I 20 mm I 2omin | 25 mm 25 mm ' 30 min I 30 min 



•Begins in second half year. 



Committee of Fifteen. 69 

In the fifth and sixth years the number of recitations 
increases to twenty-seven per week, owing to the addi- 
tion of formal grammar, and the total number of hours 
required for all is 16^ per week, or an average of 3^ 
per day. 

In the seventh and eighth years the number of les- 
sons decreases to twenty-three, history being added, 
penmanship and special lessons in spelling discon- 
tinued, the time devoted to geography reduced to three 
lessons a week. But the recitation is increased to 
thirty minutes in length. Manual training occupies a 
half-day, or 2)^ hours, each week. The total is 19 
hours per week, or 3^ per day. 

The foregoing tabular exhibit shows all of these par- 
ticulars. 

IV. METHODS AND ORGANIZATION. 

Your Committee is agreed that the time devoted to 
the elementary school work should not be reduced 
from eight years, but they have recommended, as here- 
inbefore stated, that in the seventh and eighth years a 
modified form of algebra be introduced in place of 
advanced arithmetic, and that in the eighth year Eng- 
lish grammar yield place to Latin. This makes, in 
their opinion, a proper transition to the studies of the 
secondary school and is calculated to assist the pupil 
materially in his preparation for that work. Hitherto, 
the change from the work of the elementary school has 
been too abrupt, the pupil beginning three formal 
studies at once, namely, algebra, physical geography, 
and Latin. 

Your Committee has found it necessary to discuss 
the question of methods of teaching in numerous in- 
stances, while considering the question of educational 
values and programmes, because the value and time 



yo Committee of Fifteen. 

of beginning of the several branches depend so largely 
on the method of teaching. 

The following recommendations, however, remain 
for this part of their report : — 

They would recommend that the specialization of 
teachers' work should not be attempted before the 
seventh or eighth year of the elementary school and 
in not more than one'or two studies then. In the sec- 
ondary school it is expected that a teacher will teach 
one, or at most, two branches. In the elementary 
school, for at least six years, it is better, on the whole, 
to have each teacher instruct his pupils in all the 
branches that they study, for the reason that only in 
this way can he hold an even pressure on the require- 
ments of work, correlating it in such a manner that no 
one study absorbs undue attention. In this way the 
pupils prepare all their lessons under the direct super- 
vision of the same teacher^ and by their recitations 
show what defects of methods of study there have 
been in the preparation. 

The ethical training is much more successful under 
this plan, because the personal influence of a teacher 
is much greater when he or she knows minutely the 
entire scope of the school work. In the case of the 
special teacher the responsibility is divided and the 
opportunities of special acquaintance with character 
and habits diminished. 

With one teacher, who supervises the study and 
hears all the recitations, that there is a much better 
opportunity to cultivate the two kinds of attention. The 
teacher divides his pupils into two classes and hears one 
recite while the other class prepares for the next lesson. 
The pupils reciting are required to pay strict attention 
to the one of their number who is explaining the point 
assigned him by the teacher — they are to be on the 
alert to notice any mistakes of statement or omissions of 



Committee of Fifteen. 71 

important data, they are at the same time to pay close 
attention to the remarks of the teacher. This is one 
kind of attention, which may be called associated crit- 
ical attention. The pupils engaged in the preparation 
of the next lesson are busy, each one by himself, study- 
ing the book and mastering its facts and ideas, and 
comparing them one with another, and making the 
effort to become oblivious of their fellow-pupils, the 
recitation going on, and the teacher. This is another 
kind of attention, which is not associated, but an in- 
dividual effort to master for one's self without aid a 
prescribed task and to resist all distracting influences. 
These two disciplines in attention are the best formal 
training that the school affords. 

Your Committee has already mentioned a species of 
faulty correlation wherein the attempt is made to study 
all branches in each, misapplying Jacotot's maxim, 
" all is in all " {tout est dans tout) 

A frequent error of this kind is the practice of mak- 
ing every recitation a language lesson, and interrupting 
the arithmetic, geography, history, literature, or what- 
ever it maybe, by calling the pupil's attention abruptly 
to something in his forms of expression, his pronuncia- 
tion, or to some faulty use of English; thus turning the 
entire system of school work into a series of grammar 
exercises and weakening the power of continuous 
thought on the objective contents of the several 
branches, by creating a pernicious habit of self-con- 
sciousness in the matter of verbal expression. While 
your Committee would not venture to say that there 
should not be some degree of attention to the verbal 
expression in all lessons, it is of the opinion that it 
should be limited to criticism of the recitation for its 
want of technical accuracy. The technical words in 
each branch should be discussed until the pupil is 
familiar with their full force. The faulty English should 



72 Committee of Fifteen. 

be criticised as showiug confusion of thought or mem- 
ory, and should be corrected in this sense. But sole- 
cisms of speech should be silently noted by the teacher 
for discussion in the regular language lesson. 

The question of promotion of pupils has occupied 
from time to time very much attention. Your Com- 
mittee believes that in many systems of elementary 
schools there is injury done by too much formality in 
ascertaining whether the pupils of a given class have 
completed the work up to a given arbitrarily fixed 
point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment 
of the work. In the early days of city school systems, 
when the office of superintendent was first created, it 
was thought necessary to divide up the graded course of 
study into years of work, and to hold stated annual 
examinations to ascertain how many pupils could be 
promoted to the next grade or year's work. All that 
failed at this examination were set back at the begin- 
ning of the year's work to spend another vear in review- 
ing it. This was to meet the convenience of the 
superintendent, who, it was said, could not hold exam- 
inations to suit the wants of individuals or particular 
classes. From this arrangement there naturally resulted 
a great deal of what is called ''marking time." Pupils 
who had nearly completed the work of the year were 
placed with pupils who had been till now a year's inter- 
val below them. Discouragement and demoralization 
at the thought of taking up again a course of lessons 
learned once before caused many pupils to leave school 
prematurely. 

This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of 
the cities by promoting pupils whenever they have 
completed the work of a grade. The constant tendency 
of classification to become imperfect by reason of the 
difference in rates of advancement of the several pupils 
owing to disparity in ages, degree of maturity, temper- 



Committee of Fifteen. 73 

ament, and health, makes frequenter classification 
necessary. This is easily accomplished by promoting 
the few pupils who distance the majority of their class- 
mates into the next class above, separated as it is, or 
ought to be, by an inteival of less than half a year. 
The bright pupils thus promoted have to struggle to 
make up the ground covered in the interval between 
the two classes, but they are nearly always able to 
accomplish this, and generally will in two years' time 
need another promotion from class to class. 

The Procrustean character of the old city systems 
has been removed by this device. 

There remain for mention some other evils besides 
bad systems of promotion due to defects of organiza- 
tion. The school buildings are often with superstitious 
care kept apart exclusively for particular grades of 
pupils. The central building erected for high school 
purposes, though only half filled, is not made to relieve 
the neighboring grammar school, crowded to such a 
degree that it cannot receive the classes which ought 
to be promoted from the primary schools. It has hap 
pened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so 
far that the pupils in the primary school building were 
kept at work on studies already finished, because they 
could not be transferred to the grammar school. 

In all good school systems the pupils take up new 
work when they have completed the old, and the bright 
pupils are transferred to higher classes when they have 
so far distanced their fellows that the amount of work 
fixed for the average ability of the class does not give 
them enough to do. 

In conclusion, your Committee would state, by way 
of explanation, that it has been led into many digres- 
sions, in illustrating the details of its recommendations 
in this report, through its desire to make clear the 
grounds on which it has based its conclusions and 



74 Committee of Fifteen. 

through the hope that such details will call out a still 
more thorough-going discussion of the educational 
values of branches proposed for elementary schools, 
and of the methods by which those branches may be 
successfully taught. 

With a view to increase the interest in this subject, 
your Committee recommends the publication of se- 
lected passages from the papers sent in by invited 
auxiliary committees and by volunteers, many of these 
containing valuable suggestions not mentioned in this 
report. 



Organization for City Scliool Systems. 



BY PRESIDENT ANDREW S. DRAPER. 

[This is the report of a sub-committee of the Fifteen, of which Fresl 
dent Draper of the UDiversity of Illinois is chairman. 

It is anderstood that the committee is to treat of city 
school systems, which are so large that persons chosen by 
the people to manage them, and serving without pay, can- 
not be expected to transact all the business of the system 
in person, nor to have personal knowledge of all business 
transactions, and which are so large that one person em- 
ployed to supervise the instruction cannot be assumed to 
personally manage or direct all of the details thereof, but 
must, in each case, act under plans of organization and 
administration established by law and through assistants 
or representatives. 

The end for which a school system exists is the instruc- 
tion of the children, attaching to the word instruction the 
meaning it attains in the mind of a well-educated person, 
if not in the mind of an educational expert. 

To secure this end, no plan of organization alone will 
suffice. Nothing can take the place of a sincere desire 
for good sclyols, of a fair knowledge of what good 
schools are, and what will make them, of a public spirit 
and a moral sense on the part of the people, which are 
spontaneous, or which can be appealed to with confi- 
dence. Fortunately, the interest which the people have 
in their own children is so large, and the anxiety of the 
community for public order and security is so great, that 
public sentiment may ordinarily be relied upon, or may 



76 Committee of Fifteen, 

be aroused to action, to choose proper representatives and 
take proper measures for the administration of the 
schools. If, in any case, this is not so, there is little hope 
of efficient schools. Wherever it is so, it alone will not 
suffice, but proper organization may become the instru- 
ment of public sentiment, and develop schools which will 
be equal to the needs of all, and become the safeguards of 
citizenship Efficient schools can be secured only by pro- 
vidin;^ suitable buildings and appliances, and by keeping 
them in proper order on the one hand, and, on the other 
hand, by employing, organizing, aiding, and directing 
teachers, so that the instruction shall have life and 
power to accomplish the great end for which schools are 
maintained. 

The circumstances of the case naturally and quickly 
separate the duties of administration into two great de- 
partments, one which manages the business affairs, and 
the other which supervises the instruction. The business 
affairs of the school system may be transacted by any 
citizens of common honesty, correct purposes, and of 
good business experience and sagacity. The instruction 
will be ineffective and abnormally expensive unless put 
upon a scientific educational basis and supervised by com- 
petent educational experts. 

There will be a waste of money and effort and a lack 
of results, unless the authorities of these two departments 
are sympathetic with each other ; that is, unless, on the 
one hand, the business management is sound, is apprecia* 
tive of good teaching, looks upon it as a scientific and 
professional employment, and is alert to sustain it ; and 
unless, on the other hand, the instructors are competent 
and self-respecting, know what good business manage- 
ment is, are glad to uphold it, and are able to r aspect 
tho^e who are charged with responsibility for it. 

To secure efficiency in these departments, there must 
be adequate authority and quick public accountability. 



Committee of Fifteen, 77 

The problem is not merely to secare some good school- 
houses, bat good schoolhouses wherever needed, and to 
avoid the nse of all houses which are not suitable for use ; 
it is not to get some good teaching, but to prevent all bad 
teaching, and to advance all the teaching to the highest 
possible point of special training, professional spirit, and 
of life-giving power. All of the business matters must be 
entrusted to competent business hands and managed upon 
sound business principles ; and all of the instruction must 
be put upon a professional basis. To insure this, there 
must be deliberation and wisdom in determining policy, 
and then the power to do what is determined upon must 
be present and capable of exercise, and the responsibility 
for the proper exercise of the power must, in each ease, 
be individual and immediate. 

It is imperative that we discriminate between the legis- 
lative and executive action in organizing and administer- 
ing the schools. The influences which enter into legisla- 
tive action, looking to the general organization and work 
of the schools, must necessarily and fundamentally flow 
directly from the people and be widely spread. The 
greater the number of people, in proportion to the entire 
population, who can be led to take a positive interest and 
an active part in securing good schools, the better will 
the schools be, provided the people can secure the com- 
plete execution of their purposes and plans. But experi- 
ence has clearly shown that many causes intervene to pre- 
vent the complete execution of such plans, that all the 
natural enemies of sound administration scent plenty of 
plunder and are especially active here, that good school 
administration requires much strength of character, much 
business experience, much technical knowledge, and can 
be only measurably satisfactory when the responsibility is 
adequate, and the penalties for maladministration are 
severe. Decentralization in making the plan and deter- 
mining what shall be done, and centralization in execut- 



78 Committee of Fifteen, 

ing the plan and in doing what is to be done, are, perhaps, 
equally important. 

It should be remembered that the character of the 
school work of a city is not merely a matter of local 
interest^ and that the maintenance of the schools does not 
rest merely or mainly upon local authority. The people 
of the municipality, acting, and ordinarily glad to act, 
but, in any event, being obliged to act, under and pur- 
suant to the law which has been ordained by the sover- 
eign authority of the state, establish and maintain schools. 
They must have the taxing power which the state alone 
possesses in order to enable them to proceed at all. They 
must regard the directions which the state sees fit to give 
as to the essential character of the schools, when it exer- 
cises in their behalf, or when it delegates to them the 
power of taxation. 

The plan should be flexible for good, while inflexible 
for evil. Meeting essential requirements, the people of 
the municipality may well be empowered to proceed as 
much farther as they will in elaborating a system of 
schools. The higher the plane of average intelligence, 
and the more generally and the more directly the people 
act in deciding what shall be done, and the greater the 
facility and completeness with which the intelligence of 
the city is able to secure the proper execution of its plans 
by officers appointed for that purpose, the more elaborate 
and the more efficient will be the schools, and this should, 
of course, be provided for. 

It is idle to suggest that centering executive functions 
is unwisely taking power away from the people. The 
people cannot execute plans themselves. The authority 
to do it must necessarily be delegated. The question 
simply is, ^^ Shall it be given to a number of persons, and 
if so, to how many ? Or to only one ? " This question 
is to be decided by experience, and it is, of course, true 
that experience has not been uniform. But it is doubt- 



Committee of Fifteen. 79 

less trne that the general experience of the communities 
of the conntry has shown that where purely executive 
functions are conferred upon a numher of persons jointly, 
they yield to antagonistic influences and shift the respon- 
sibility from one to another ; and that centering the re- 
sponsibility for the proper discharge of executive duties 
upon a single person, who gets the credit of good work 
and must bear the disgrace or penalty of bad work, and 
who can quickly be held accountable for misdeeds and in- 
efficiency, has secured the fullest execution of public plans 
and the largest results. To call this ^^centralization," 
with the meaning which commonly attaches to the word, 
is inaccurate. Instead of removing the power from the 
people, it is keeping the power closer to the people, and 
making it possible for the citizen in his individual 
capacity and for organized bodies of citizens to secure 
the execution of plans according to the purpose and in- 
tent with which those plans were made. Indeed, it is 
safe to say that experience has shown that this is th^ only 
way in which to prevent the frequent thwarting of the 
popular will and the defiance of individuals whose inter- 
ests &re ignored or whose rights are invaded. 

But all the people of a city whose population is num- 
bered by hundreds of thousands or millions cannot meet 
in a legislative assemblage to formulate plans. They 
cannot gather in mass meetings, and, if they could, mass 
meetings cannot deliberate. Even their legislative action 
must flow, not from a primary, but from a representative 
assembly. 

What shall such a representative legislative body be 
called ? How shall it be chosen ? Of how many mem- 
bers shall it be composed ? And what shall be its powers ? 
These and other similar questions are all important and 
must be determined by the lawmaking power of the state. 
The sentiments of the city, as expressed through the local 
organizations, and particularly the newspapers, must, of 



8o Committee of Fifteen. 

coarse, have much weight with the legislature if there is 
anything like ananimity or any very strong preponder- 
ance of opinion in the city, for the plan for which a com- 
munity expresses a preference will surely be likely to 
operate most effectually in that community. But the 
local sentiment is not conclusive. When divided, it is no 
guide at all. The legislature is to take all the circum- 
stances into consideration, take the world's experience for 
its guide, and, acting under its responsibilities, it must ex- 
ercise its high powers in ways which will build up a sys- 
tem of schools in the city likely to articulate with the state 
educational system and become the effective instrument 
of developing the intelligence and training the character 
of the children of the city up to the ideals of the 
state. 

The name of the legislative branch of the school gov- 
ernment is not material, and the one to which the people 
are accustomed may well continue to be employed. There 
is no name more appropriate than the " Board of Edu- 
cation." 

The manner of selecting or appointing thw members of 
this legislative body may turn somewhat upon the cir- 
cumstances of the city. We are strongly of the opinion 
that in view of the well-known diffiiiulty about securing 
the attendance of the most interested and intelligent 
electors at school elections, as well as because of the 
apparent impossibility of freeing school elections from 
political or municipal issues, the better manner of elections 
is by appointment. If the members of the board are 
appointed, the mayor of the city is likely to be the official 
to whom the power of appointment may most safely be 
entrusted. The mayor is not suggested because his office 
should sustain any relation to the school system, but in 
spite of the fact that it does not and should not. The 
school system should be absolutely emancipated from 
partisan politics, and completely dissociated from mu- 



Committee of Fifteen, 8i 

nicipal business. Bat we think the appointments should 
be made by some one person, rather than by a board. 
The mayor is representative of the whole city and all its 
interests. While not chosen with any reference to the 
interests of the schools, he may be assumed to have infor- 
mation as to the fitness of citizens for particular respon- 
sibilities, and to be desiroas of promoting the educational 
interests of the people. If he is given the power of ap- 
pointment, he should be particularly enjoined by law to 
consider the fitness of individuals alone and pay no re- 
gard to party affiliations, unless it be to particularly see 
to it that no one political party has an overwhelming pre- 
ponderance in the board. The mayor very commonly 
feels constrained, under the pressure of party expediency, 
to make so many questionable appointments, that he is 
only too glad, and particularly so when enjoined by the 
law, to make very acceptable appintments of members of 
school boards, in order that he may gratify the better 
sentiment of the city. We are confident that the prob- 
lem of getting a representative board of education is not 
so difficult as many think, if the board is not permitted to 
make patronage of work and salaried positions at the dis- 
posal of the public-school system. Under such circum- 
stances, and more and more so as we have approached 
such circumstances, appointment in the way we suggest 
has produced the best school boards in the larger cities of 
the country. 

The members of school boards should be representative 
of the whole population and of all their common educa- 
tional interests, and should not be chosen to represent any 
ward or subdivision of the territory, or any party or ele- 
ment in the political, religious, or social life thereof. 
Where this principle is not enforced, the members will 
feel bound to gain what advantage they can for the dis- 
trict or interests they represent ; bitter contests will ensue, 
and the common interests will suffer. 



82 Committee of Fifteen. 

Attempts to eliminate partisanship from school admin- 
istration, by arraying an equal number of partisans 
against each other in school boards, do not, at best, lead 
to an ideal organization. In some instances they have 
proved fairly successful ; in others, very mischievous. 
The true course is to insist that all who have any share 
in the management of the schools shall divest themselves 
of partisanship, whether political or religious, in such 
management, and give themselves wholly to the high in- 
terests entrusted to them. If it be said that this cannot 
be realized, it may be answered, without admitting it, 
that even if that were so, it would be no reason why the 
friends of the schools should not assert the sound principle 
and secure its enforcement as far as possible. We must 
certainly give no countenance to make-shifts, which expe- 
rience has shown to be misleading and expensive. The 
right must prevail in the end, and the earlier and more 
strongly it is contended for, the sooner it will prevail. 

Relatively small boards are preferable to large ones. 
In a city of less than a half-million of inhabitants, the 
number should not exceed nine, and might well not ex- 
ceed five. In the very largest cities it might be enlarged 
to fifteen. 

The term for which members are appointed should be 
a reasonably long one, say, five years. 

We think it an excellent plan to provide for two 
branches and sets of powers in the board of education ; 
the one to have the veto power, or, at least, to act as a 
check upon the acts of the other. This may be accom- 
plished by creating the office of school director and charg- 
ing the incumbent with executive duties on the business 
side of the administration, and by giving him the veto 
power over the acts of the other branch of the board, 
which may be called the " School Council." Beyond the 
care and conservation which is ensured by two sets of 
powers acting against each other, it has the advantage of 



Committee of Fifteen. S3 

giving the chief executive officer of the system jost as 
high and good a title as that of memhers of the hoard, 
it is likely to secure a more representative man, and gives 
him larger prerogatives in the discharge of his executive 
duties and better standing among the people, particularly 
among the employees and teachers associated with the 
public-school system. 

If this plan is adopted, the school director should be 
required to give his entire time to the duties of his posi- 
tion, and be properly compensated therefor. He should 
be the custodian of all property and should appoint all 
assistants, janitors, and workmen, authorized by the 
board, for the care of the same. He should give bond, 
with sufficient sureties and penalties, for the faithful and 
proper discharge of all his duties. He should be author- 
ized by law to expend funds, within a fixed limit, for re- 
pairs, appliances, and help, without the action of the 
board. All contracts should be made by him, and should 
run in his name, and he should be charged with the respon- 
sibility of seeing that they are faithfully and completely 
executed. All contracts involving more than a limited 
and fixed sum of money should be let upon bids to be 
advertised for and opened in public. He should have a 
seat in the board of education ; should not vote, but should 
have the power to veto, either absolutely or conditionally, 
any of the acts of the board, through a written communi- 
cation. This officer and the school council should together 
constitute the board of education. 

The board of education should be vested with legisla- 
tive functions only, and be required to act wholly through 
formal and recorded resolutions. It should determine 
and direct the general policy of the school system. Within 
reasonable limits, as to amount, it should be given power, 
in its discretion, to levy whatever moneys may be needed 
for school purposes. It should control the expenditure 
of all moneys beyond a fixed and limited amount, which 



84 Committee of Fifteen, 

may safely and advantageoasly be left to the discretion 
of the chief executive business officer. It should author- 
ize, by general resolutions, the appointment of necessary 
officers and employees in the business department, and 
the superintendent, assistants, and teachers in the depart- 
ment of instruction, but it should be allowed to make no 
appointments other than its own clerk. With this nec- 
essary exception, single officers should be charged with 
responsibility for all appointments. 

This plan, not in all, but in essential particulars, has 
been on trial in the city of Cleveland for nearly three 
years, and has worked with very general acceptability. 

If this plan is adopted, the chief executive officer of the 
system is already provided for and his duties have already 
been indicated. Otherwise it will be necessary for the 
board to appoint such an officer. In that event, the law 
should declare him independent, confer upon him ade- 
quate authority for the performance of executive duties, 
and charge him with responsibility. But we know of no 
statutory language capable of making an officer appointed 
by a board, and dependent upon the same board for sup- 
plies, independent in fact of the personal wishes of the 
members of that board. And right here is where the 
troubles rush in to discredit and damage the school 
system. 

We now come to the subject of paramount importance 
in making a plan for the school government in a great 
city, namely, the character of the teaching force and the 
quality of the instruction. A city school system may be 
able to withstand some abuses on the business side of its 
administration and continue to perform its functions with 
measurable success, but wrongs against the instruction 
must, in a little time, prove fatal. The strongest language 
is none too strong here. The safety of the republic, the 
security of American citizenship, are at stake. Govern- 
ment by the people has no moria dangerous pitfall in its 



Committee of Fifteen. S5 

road than this, that in the mighty cities of the land the 
comfortable and intelligent masses, who are discriminat- 
ing more and more closely about the education of their 
children, shall become dissatisfied with the social status 
of the teachers and the quality of the teaching in the 
common schools. In that event they will educate their 
children at their own expense, and the public schools will 
become only good enough for those who can afPord no 
better. The only way to avert this is by maintaining 
the instruction upon a purely scientific and professional 
footing. This is entirely practicable, but it involves much 
care and expense in training teachers, the .absolute elimi- 
nation of favoritism from appointments, the security of 
the right to advancement after appointment, on the basis 
of merit, and a general leadership which is kindly, help- 
ful, and stimulating to individuals^ which can secure har- 
monious cooperation from all the members, and lends 
energy and inspiration to the whole body. 

This cannot be secured if there is any lack of authority, 
and experience amply proves that it will not be secured 
if there is any division of responsibility. The whole mat- 
ter of instruction must be placed in the hands of a super- 
intendent of instruction, with independent powers and 
adequate authority, who is charged with full responsibility. 

The danger of inconsiderate or improper action by on& 
vested with such powers is, of course, possible, but it is 
remote. Kegardless of the legal powers with which he 
may be individually vested, he is in fact and in law a part 
of a large system. He must act through others, and in 
the presence of multitudes. There is great publicity 
about all he does. When a single officer carries such 
responsibility, he is at the focus of all eyes. There are 
the strongest incentives to right action. He cannot act 
wrongfully without it is known, at least to many persons. 
If he is required to act under and pursuant to a plan, the 
details of which have been announced, and of which we 



86 Committee of Fifteen, 

shall speak in a moment, a wrongful act will be known to 
the world, and he mast bear the responsibility of it, and 
the danger of maladministration is almost eliminated. 

Moreover, we mast consider the alternative. It is not 
in doabt. All who have had any contact with the sabject 
are familiar with it. It is administration by boards or 
committees, the members of which are not competent to 
manage professional matters and develop an expert teach- 
ing force. Thoagh necessarily inexperienced, they fre- 
quently assume the knowledge of the most experienced. 
They over-iide and degrade a superintendent, when they 
have the power to do so, until he becomes their mere 
factotum. For the sake of harmony and the continuance 
of his position, he concedes, surrenders, and acquiesces in 
their acts, while the continually increasing teaching force 
becomes weaker and weaker, and the work poorer and 
poorer. If he refuses to do this, they precipitate an open 
rupture, and turn him out of hid position. Then they 
cloud the issues and shift the responsibility from one to 
another. There are exceptions, of course, but they do not 
change the rule. 

It will be unprofitable to mince words about this all- 
important matter. If the course of study for the public 
schools of a great city is to be determined by laymen, it 
will not be suited to the needs of a community. If 
teachers are to be appointed by boards or committees, the 
members of which are particularly sensitive to the desires 
of people who have votes or influence, looseness of action 
is inevitable, and unworthy considerations will frequently 
prevail. If the action of a board or committee be con- 
ditioned upon the recommendation of a superintendent, 
the plan will not suffice. No one person is stronger than 
the system of which he is a part. Such a plan results in 
contests between the board and the superintendents, and 
such a contest is obviously an unequal one. There is little 
doubt of the outcome. In recommending for the ap' 



Committee of Fifteen. 87 

pointment of teachers, the personal wishes of members of 
the board, in particular cases, will have to be acqaiesced in. 
If a teacher, no matter how unfit, cannot be dropped 
from the list without the approval of a board or com- 
mittee after they have heard from her friends and sympa- 
thizers, she will remain indefinitely in the service. This 
means a low tone in the teaching force and desolation in 
the work of the schools. If the superintendent accepts 
the situation, he becomes less and less capable of develop- 
ing a professional teaching service. If he refuses to ac- 
cept it, he is very likely to meet humiliation ; dismissal is 
practically inevitable. 

The superintendent of instruction should be charged 
with no duty save the supervision of the instruction, but 
should be charged with the responsibility of making that 
professional and scientific, and should be given the posi- 
tion and authority to accomplish that end. 

If the board of education is constituted upon the old 
plan, he must be chosen by the board. If it is consti- 
tuted upon the Cleveland plan, he may be appointed by 
the school director, with the approval of two -thirds or 
three-fourths of the council. The latter plan seems 
preferable, for it centralizes the main responsibility of 
this important appointment in a single individual. In 
either case, the law and the sentiment of the city should 
direct that the appointee shall be a person liberally edu- 
cated, professionally trained ; one who knows what good 
teaching is, but is also experienced in administration, in 
touch with public affairs, and in sympathy with popular 
feeling. 

The term of the superintendent of instruction should 
be from five to ten years, and until a successor is ap- 
pointed. In our judgment, it should be determinate, so 
that there may be a time of public examination, but it 
should be sufficiently long to enable one to lay founda- 
tions and show results, without being carried under by the 



88 Committee of Fifteen. 

prejudices which always follow the first operation of effi- 
cient or drastic plans. The salary should be fixed by 
law, and not subject to change in the middle of a term 
or except by law. 

For reasons already suggested, the superintendent, 
once appointed, should have power to appoint, from an 
eligible list, all assistants and teachers authorized by the 
board, and unlimited authority to assign them to their 
respective positions, and reassign them or remove them 
from the force at his discretion. 

To secure a position upon the eligible list from which 
appointments may be made, a candidate, if without expe- 
rience, should be required to complete the full four 
years' course of the city high Echools, or its equivalent, 
and in addition thereto pass the examination of the 
board of examiners, and complete at least a year's course 
of professional training in a city normal training school 
under the direction of the superintendent. If the candi- 
date has had, say, three years of successful experience as 
a teacher, he should be eligible to appointment by passing 
an examination held by a general examining board. This 
board may be appointed by the board of education, but 
should examine none but graduates of the high school and 
training school, unless specially r^ quested so to do by the 
superintendent of instruction. The number admitted to 
the training schools should be limited, and the examina- 
tions should be gauged to the prospective needs of the 
elementary schools for new teachers. The supply of 
new teachers may well be largely, but should not be 
wholly, drawn from this local source. The force will 
gain fresh vitality by some appointments of good and 
experienced teachers from outside. 

The work of putting a large teaching force upon a 
professional basis, of making the teaching scientific and 
capable of arousing mind to action, is so difficult that a 
layman can scarcely appreciate it. It has hardly been 



Committee of Fifteen, 89 

commenced, it has oaly beea made possible, wh^n the 
avenaes of approach to the service have been closed 
against the nnqaalified and unworthy* After that the 
supervision mast be close and general, as well as sympa- 
thetic and decisive. The snperintendent must have ex- 
pert assistants enough to learn the characteristics and 
measure the work of every member of the force. They 
must help and encourage, advise and direct, according to 
the circumstances of each case. The work must be re- 
duced to a system and the workers brought into harmo- 
nious relations. Each room must show neatness and life, 
and the whole force must show ardor and enthusiasm. By 
directing the reading, by encouraging an interchange of 
visits, by organizing clubs for self -improvement, by fre- 
quent class and grade and general meetings, the profes- 
sional spirit may be aroused and the work energized. 
Those who show teaching power, versatility, amiability, 
reliability, steadiness, and growth must be rewarded with 
the highest positions : those who lack fibre, who have no 
energy, who are incapable of enthusiasm, who will not 
work agreeably with their associates, must go upon the 
retired list. Directness and openness must be encour- 
aged. Attempts to invoke social, political, religious, or 
other outside influences to secure preferment must oper- 
ate to close the door to advancement. In general and 
in particular, bad teaching must be prevented. In every 
room a firm and kindly management must prevail and 
good teaching must be apparent. All must work along 
common lines which will ensure general and essential 
ends. Until a teacher can do this and can be relied upon 
to do it, she must be helped and directed : when it is 
manifest that she cannot or will not do it, she must be 
dismissed ; when she does show that she can do it and 
wants to do it, she must be left to exercise her own judg- 
ment and originality and do it in her own way. In the 
schoolroom the teacher must be secure against interfer- 



90 Committee of Fifteen, 

ence. In all the affairs of the school her jadgment mast 
be trasted to the atmost limit of safety. Then jadgment 
will strengthen, and self-respect and public respect will 
grow. The qualities which develop in the teacher will 
develop in the school. To develop these qualities with 
any degree of uniformity, in a large teaching force, re- 
quires steady and uniform treatment throogh a long 
course of years under superintendence which is profes- 
sional, strong, just, and courageous, which has ample as- 
sistance and authority, which is worthy of public confi- 
dence, aod knows how to marshal facts, present argu- 
ments, and appeal to the intelligence and integrity of the 
community with success. 

It is the business of the plan of organization to secure 
such superintendence. It cannot be secured through an 
ordinary board of education operating on the old plan. 
It is well known what the ioflaences are which are every- 
where prevalent and must inevitably prevent it. It may 
be secured in the law, and it must be secured there, or it 
will not be secured at all. 

In concluding this portion of the report, the committee 
indicates briefly the principles which must necessarily be 
observed in framing a plan of organization and govern- 
ment in a large city school system. 

Fir&t — The affairs of the schools should not be mixed 
up with partisan contents or municipal business. 

Second — There should be a sharp distinction between 
legislative functions and executive duties. 

Third. — Legislative functions should be clearly fixed 
by statute and be exercised by a relatively small board, 
each member of which board is representative of the 
whole city. This board, within statutory limitations, 
should determine the policy of the system, levy taxes, and 
control the expenditures. It should make no appoint- 
ments. Every act should be by a recorded resolution. 
It is preferable that this board be created by appointment 



Committee of Fifteen. 91 

rather than election, and that it be constituted of two 
branches acting against each other. 

Fourth. — Administration should be separated into two 
great independent departments, one of which manages the 
business interests and the other of which supervises the 
instruction. Each of these should be wholly directed by 
a single official, who is vested with ample authority and 
charged with full responsibility for sound administration. 

Fifth. — The chief executive officer on the business 
side should be charged with the care of all property, and 
with the duty of keeping it in suitable condition ; he 
should provide all necessary furnishings and appliances ; 
he should make all agreements and see that they are 
properly performed; he should appoint all assistants, 
janitors, and workmen. In a word, he should do all that 
the law contemplates, and all that the board authorizes, 
concerning the business affairs of the school system, and 
when anything goes wrong, he should answer for it. He 
may be appointed by the board, but we think it preferable 
that he be chosen in the same way the members of the 
board are chosen, and be given a veto upon the acts of 
the board. 

Sixth, — The chief executive officer of the department 
of instruction should be given a long term, and may be 
appointed by the board. If the board is constituted of 
two branches, he should be nominated by the business 
executive and confirmed by the legislative branch. Once 
appointed, he should be independent. He should appoint 
all authorized assistants and teachers from an eligible 
list, to be constituted as provided by law. He should 
assign to duties and discontinue services for cause at his 
discretion. He should determine all matters relating to 
instruction. He should be charged with the responsibility 
of developing a professional and enthusiastic teaching 
force and of making all the teaching scientific and force- 
ful. He must perfect the organization of his department, 



92 Committee of Fifteen, 

and make and carry out plans to accomplish this. If he 
cannot do this in a reasonable time, he should be saper- 
seded by one who can. 

The government of a vast city school system comes to 
have an autonomy which is largely its own, and almost in- 
dependent of direction or restraint. The volume of busi- 
ness which this government transacts is represented only 
by millions of dollars ; it calls not only for the highest 
sagacity and the ripest experience, but also for much 
special information relating to school property and school 
affairs. Even more important than this is the fact that 
this government controls and determines the educational 
policy of the city and carries on the instruction of tens or 
hundreds of thousands of children, and this instruction is 
of little value, and perhaps vicious, unless i^ is profes- 
sional and scientific. This government is representative. 
All citizens are compelled to support it, and all have large 
interests which it is bound to promote. Every parent 
has rights which it is the duty of this school government 
to protect and enforce. When government exacts our 
support of public education, when it comes into our 
homes and takes our children into its custody and in- 
structs them according to its will, we acquire a right 
which is as exalted as any right of property, or of person, 
or of conscience can be, and that is the right to know 
that the environment is healthful, that the management 
is kindly and ennobling, and that the instruction is 
rational and scientific. It is needless to say to what 
extent these interests are impeded or blocked, or how 
commonly these rights of citizenship and of parentage are 
denied or defied, or how helpless the individual is who 
seeks their enforcement, under the system of school gov- 
ernment which has heretofore obtained in some of the 
great cities of the country. This is not surprising. It is 
only the logical result of the rapid growth of cities, of a 
marvelous advance in knowledge of what is needed in the 



Committee of Fifteen, 93 

sebooIS) of the antagonism of selfish interests, by which all 
pablic administration, and particalarly school administra- 
tion, is encompassed, and of the lack of plan and system, 
the confusion of powers, the absence of individaal responsi- 
bility, in the government of a system of schools. By the 
census of 1890 there are seven cities in the United States 
each with a population greater than any one of sixteen 
states. The aggregate population of twelve cities ex- 
ceeds the aggregate population of twenty states. Gov- 
ernment for education certainly requires as strong and 
responsible an organization as government for any other 
purpose. These great centres of population, with their 
vast and complex educational problems, have passed the 
stage when government by the time-honored commission 
will suffice. No popular government ever determined the 
policy and administered the affairs of such large bodies of 
people successfully, ever transacted such a vast volume of 
business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and beneficent 
ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each indi- 
vidual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organi- 
zation there was an organic separation of executive, 
legislative, and judicial functions and powers. All the 
circumstances of the case and the uniform experience of 
the world forbid our expecting any substantial solution of 
the problem we are considering until it is well settled in 
the sentiments of the people that the school systems of 
the greatest cities are only a part of the school systems of 
the states of which these cities form a part, and are sub- 
ject to the legislative authority thereof ; until there is a 
plan of school government in each city which differenti- 
ates executive acts from legislative functions ; which 
emancipates the legislative branch of that government 
from the influence of pelf -seekers ; which fixes upon indi- 
viduals the responsibility for executive acts, either per- 
formed or omitted ; which gives to the intelligence of the 
community the power to influence legislation and exact 



94 Committee of Fifteen. 

perfect and complete execntion ; which gives every citi- 
zen whose interests are ignored, or whose rights are in- 
vaded, a place for complaint and redress; and which 
puts the hasiness interests upon a business footing, the 
teaching upon an expert basis, and gives to the instruction 
that protection and encouragement which is vital to the 
development of all professional and scientific work. 



On the Training of Teachers. 



BY SUPERINTENDENT H. S. TARBELL, PROVIDENCE. 



[Keport of the Fifteen. Kead at the Cleyeland meeting of 
the Department of Superintendence, February 19, 1895.] 

This report treats of the training of elementary and 
secondary teachers, considering first that training 
which should precede teaching in elementary schools. 
By elementary schools are meant the primary and 
grammar departments of graded schools, and ungraded 
or rural schools. 

That teachers are " born, not made," has been so 
fully the world's thought until the present century 
that a study of subjects, without any study of prin- 
ciples or methods of teaching, has been deemed quite 
sufficient. Modern educational thought and modern 
practice, in all sections where excellent schools are 
found, confirm the belief that there is a profound 
philosophy on which educational methods are based, 
and that careful study of this philosophy and its ap- 
plication under expert guidance are essential to making 
fit the man born to teach. 

Conditions for projessional training — age and 
attainments. 

It is a widely prevalent doctrine, to which the cus- 
toms of our best schools conform, that teachers of 
elementary schools should have a secondary or high 
school education, and that teachers of high schools 
should have a collegiate education. Your committee 



96 Committee of Fifteen, 

believe tliat these are tlie minimum acquirements that 
can generally be accepted, that the scholarship, culture, 
and power gained by four years of study in advance of 
the pupils are not too much to be rightfully demanded, 
and that as a rule no one ought to become a teacher 
who has not the age and attainments presupposed in 
the possessor of a high-school diploma. There are 
differences in high schools, it is true, and a high- 
school diploma is not a fixed standard of attainment ; 
but in these United States it is one of the most defi- 
nite and uniform standards that we possess, and varies 
less .than college degrees vary or than elementary 
schools and local standards of culture vary. 

It is, of course, implied in the foregoing remarks 
that the high school from which the candidate comes 
is known to be a reputable school, and that its diploma 
is proof of the completion of a good four-years' course 
in a creditable manner. If these conditions do not 
exist, careful examination is the only recourse. 

If this condition, high-school graduation or proof 
by examination of equivalent scholarship, be accepted, 
the questions of the age and attainment to be reached 
before entering upon professional study and training 
are already settled. But if a more definite statement 
be desired, then it may be said that the candidate for 
admission to a normal or training school should be 
eighteen years of age and should have studied English, 
mathematics, and science to the extent usually pur- 
sued in high schools, should be able to write readily, 
correctly, and methodically upon topics within the 
teacher's necessary range of thought and conversation, 
and should have studied, for two or more years, at 
least one language besides English. Skill in music 
and drawing is desirable, particularly ability to sketch 
readily and effectively. 



Committee of Fifteen. 9^ 

Training schools. 

The training of teachers may be done in normal 
schools, normal classes in academies and high schools, 
and in city training schools. To all these the general 
term " training schools " will be applied. Those in- 
structed in these schools will be called pupils while 
engaged in professional study, and pupil-teachers or 
teachers-in-training while in practice-teaching prepar- 
atory to graduation. Teachers whose work is to be 
observed by pupil-teachers will be called model- 
teachers ; teachers in charge of pupil-teachers during 
their practice work will be called critic-teachers. In 
some institutions model-teachers and critic-teachers 
are the same persons. The studies usually pursued 
in academies and high schools will be termed academic, 
and those post-academic studies to be pursued before 
or during practice-teaching as a preparation therefor 
will be termed professional. 

Academic studies. 

Whether academic studies have any legitimate 
place in a normal or training school is a question 
much debated. It cannot be supposed that your com- 
mittee can settle in a paragraph a question upon 
which many essays have been written, many speeches 
delivered, and over which much controversy has been 
waged. 

If training schools are to be distinguished from 
other secondary schools, they must do a work not 
done in other schools. So far as they teach common 
branches of study, they are doing what other schools 
are doing, and have small excuse for existence ; but it 
may be granted that methods can practically be 
taught only as to subjects, that the study done in pro- 



98 Committee of Fifteen. 

fessional schools may so treat of the subjects of 
study, not as objects to be required, but as objects to 
be presented, that their treatment shall be wholly 
professional. 

O-ue who is to teach a subject needs to know it as a 
whole, made up of related and subordinate parts, and 
hence must study it by a method that will give this 
knowledge. It is not necessary to press the argument 
that many pupils enter normal and training schools 
with, such slight preparation as to require instruction 
in academic subjects. The college with a preparatory 
department is, as a rule, an institution of distinctly 
lower grade than one without such a department. 
Academic work in normal schools that is of the nature 
of preparation for professional work lowers the stan- 
dard and perhaps the usefulness of such a school ; but 
academic work done as a means of illustrating or en- 
forcing professional truth has its place in a profes- 
sional school as in effect a part of the professional 
work. Professional study differs widely from aca- 
demic study. In the one, a science is studied in its 
relation to the studying mind ; in the other, in refer- 
ence to its principles and applications. The aim of 
one kind of study is power to apply ; of the other, 
power to present. The tendency of the one is to 
bring the learner into sympathy with the natural 
world, of the other with the child world. How much 
broader becomes the teacher who takes both the aca- 
demic and the professional view ! He who learns that 
he may know and he who learns that he may teach are 
standing in quite different mental attitudes. One 
works for knowledge of subject-matter, the other that 
his knowledge may have due organization, that he 
may bring to consciousness the apperceiving ideas by 
means of which matter and method may be suitably 
conjoined. 



Committee of Fifteen, 99 

How to study is knowledge indispensable to know- 
ing how to teach. The method of teaching can best 
be illustrated by teaching. The attitude of a pupil in 
a training school must be that of a learner whose 
mental stores are expanding, who faces the great 
world of knowledge with the purpose to survey a 
portion of it. If we insist upon a sufficient prepara- 
tion for admission, the question of what studies to 
pursue, and especially the controversy between pro- 
fessional and academic work, will be mainly settled. 

Professional work. 

Professional training comprises two parts : {a) 
The science of teaching, and {b) the art of teaching. 

In the science of teaching are included: (1) Psy- 
chology as a basis for principles and methods ; (2) 
Methodology as a guide to instruction ; (3) School 
economy, which adjusts the conditions of work ; and 
(4) History of education, which gives breadth of 
view. 

T\iQ art of teaching i^ best gained: (1) by observa- 
tion of good teaching ; (2) by practice-teaching under 
criticism. 

Relative time. 

The existence and importance of each of these ele- 
ments in the training of teachers are generally ac- 
knowledged. Their order and proportionate treat- 
ment give rise to differences of opinion. Some would 
omit the practice work entirely, launching the young 
teacher upon independent work directly from her 
pupilage in theory. Others, and much the greater 
number, advise some preparation in the form of 
guided experience before the training be considered 
complete. These vary greatly in their estimate of 
the proportionate time to be given to practice during 



loo Committee of Fifteen. 

training. The answers to the question "What pro- 
portion ? " which yonr committee has received range 
from one-sixteenth to two-thirds as the proportion of 
time to be given to practice. The greater number, 
however, advocate a division of time about equal be- 
tween theory and practice. 

The normal schools incline to the smallest propor- 
tion for practice-teaching, the city training-schools to 
the largest. It should be borne in mind, however, 
that city training-schools are a close continuation, 
usually, of high schools, and that the high-school 
courses give a more uniform and probably a more 
adequate preparation than the students entering nor- 
mal schools have usually had. Their facilities for 
practice-teaching are much greater than normal 
schools can secure, and for this reason also practice 
is made relatively more important. As to the relative 
merits of city training-schools and normal schools, 
your committee does not desire to express an opinion; 
the conditions of education demand the existence of 
both, and both are necessities of educational advance- 
ment. It is important to add, however, that in the 
judgment of your committee not less than half of the 
time spent under training by the apprentice-teacher 
should be given to observation and practice, and that 
this practice in its conditions should be as similar as 
possible to the work she will later be required to do 
independently. 

Science of teaching — psychology. 

The laws of apperception teach that one is ready ta 
apprehend new truth most readily when he has 
already established a considerable and well-arranged 
body of ideas thereon. 

Suggestion, observation, and reflection are each 



Committee of Fifteen. loi 

most fruitful when a foundation of antecedent knowl- 
edge has been provided. Hence your committee rec- 
ommends that early in their course of study teachers 
in training assume as true the well-known facts of 
psychology and the essential principles of education, 
and make their later study and practice in the light 
of these principles. These principles thus become 
the norm of educational thought, and their truth is 
continually demonstrated by subsequent experience. 
From this time theory and practice should proceed 
together in mutual aid and support. 

Most fundamental and important of the professional 
studies which ought to be pursued by one intending 
to teach is psychology. This study should be pur- 
sued at two periods of the training-school course, the 
beginning and the end, and its principles should be 
appealed to daily when not formally studied. The 
method of study should be both deductive and induc- 
tive. The terminology should be early learned from 
a suitable text-book, and significance given to the 
terms by introspection, observation, and analysis. 
Power of introspection should be gained, guidance in 
observation should be given, and confirmation of 
psychological principles should be sought on every 
hand. The habit of thinking analytically and psy- 
chologically should be formed by every teacher. At 
the close of the course a more profound and more 
completely inductive study of physiological psy- 
chology should be made. In this way, a tendency to 
investigate should be encouraged or created. 

Study of children. 

Modern educational thought emphasizes the opinion 
that the child, not the subject of study, is the guide 
to the teacher's efforts. To know the child is of para- 



I02 Committee of Fifteen. 

mount importance. How to know the child must be 
an important item of instruction to the teacher in 
training. The child must be studied as to his physi- 
cal, mental, and moral condition. Is he in good 
health ? Are his senses of sight and hearing normal, 
or in what degree abnormal ? What is his tempera- 
ment? Which of his faculties seem weak or dor- 
mant ? Is he eye-minded or ear-minded ? What are 
his powers of attention ? What are his likes and dis- 
likes ? How far is his moral nature developed, and 
what are its tendencies ? By what tests can the 
degree of difference between bright and dull children 
be estimated ? 

To study effectively and observingly these and 
similar questions respecting children is a high art. 
No common-sense power of discerning human nature 
is sufficient ; though common sense and sympathy go 
a long way in such study. Weighing, measuring, 
elaborate investigation requiring apparatus and lab- 
oratory methods, are for experts, not teachers in 
training. Above all, it must ever be remembered 
that the child is to be studied as a personality and 
not as an object to be weighed or analyzed. 

Methodology. 

A part of the work under this head must be a study 
of the mental and moral effects of different methods 
of teaching and examination, the relative value of 
individual and class instruction at different periods of 
school life and in the study of different branches. 
The art of questioning is to be studied in its founda- 
tion principles and by the illustration of the best 
examples. Some review of the branches which are to 
be taught may be made, making the teacher's knowl- 
edge of them ready and distinct as to the relations of 



Committee of Fifteen. 103 

the several parts of the subject to one another and of 
the whole to kindred subjects. These and many such 
subjects should be discussed in the class in pedagogy, 
investigation should be begun, and the lines on which 
it can be followed should be distinctly laid down. 

The laws of psychology, or the capabilities and 
methods of mind-activity, are themselves the funda- 
mental laws of teaching, which is the act of exciting 
normal and profitable mind-action. Beyond these 
fundamental laws, the principles of education are to 
be derived inductively. These inductions when 
brought to test will be found to be rational inferences 
from psychological laws and thus founded upon and 
explained by them. 

School economy. 

School economy, though a factor of great impor- 
tance in the teacher's training, can be best studied by 
the teacher of some maturity and experience, and is 
of more value in the equipment of secondary than of 
elementary teachers. Only its outlines and funda- 
mental principles should be studied in the ordinary 
training-school. 

History of education. 

Breadth of mind consists in the power to view facts 
and opinions from the standpoints of others. It is 
this truth which makes the study of history in a full, 
appreciative way so influential in giving mental 
breadth. This general advantage the history of edu- 
cation has in still larger degree, because our interest 
in the views and experiences of those engaged like us 
in training the young enables us to enter more fully 
into their thoughts and purposes than we could into 
those of the warrior or ruler. From the efforts of the 



I04 Committee of Fifteen. 

man we imagine his surroundings, whicli we contrast 
with our own. To the abstract element of theoretical 
truth is added the warm human interest we feel in the 
hero, the generous partisan of truth. The history of 
education is particularly full of examples of noble 
purpose, advanced thought, and moral heroism. It is 
inspiring to fill our minds with these human ideals. 
We read in the success of the unpractical Pestalozzi 
the award made to self-sacrifice, sympathy, and enthu- 
siasm expended in giving application to a vital truth. 
But with enthusiasm for ideals history gives us 
caution, warns us against the moving of the pendu- 
lum, and gives us points of departure from which to 
measure progress. It gives us courage to attack diffi- 
cult problems. It shows which the abiding problems 
are — those that can be solved only by waiting, and 
not tossed aside by a supreme effort. It shows us the 
progress of the race, the changing ideals of the per- 
fect man, and the means by which men have sought 
to realize these ideals. We can from its study better 
answer the question, What is education, what may it 
accomplish, and how may its ideals be realized ? It 
gives the evolution of the present and explains anom- 
alies in our work. And yet the history of education 
is not a subject to be treated extensively in a training 
school. All but the outlines may better be reserved 
for later professional reading. 

Training in teaching. 

Training to teach requires (1) schools for observa- 
tion, and (2) schools for practice. 

Of necessity, these schools must be separate in pur- 
pose and in organization. A practice-school cannot 
be a model school. The pupil-teachers should have 
the opportunity to observe the best models of the 



Committee of Fifteen. 105 

teaching art ; and the manner, methods, and devices 
of the model-teacher should be noted, discussed, and 
referred to the foundation principles on which they 
rest. Allowable modifications of this observed work 
may be suggested by the pupil-teacher and approved 
by the teacher in charge. 

There should be selected certain of the best teachers 
in regular school work, whom the pupil-teachers may 
be sent to observe. The j)^pil-teachers should take 
no part in the school work nor cause any change 
therein. They should, however, be told in advance 
by the teacher what purpose she seeks to accomplish. 
This excites expectation and brings into consciousness 
the apperceiving ideas by which the suggestions of 
the exercise, as they develop, may be seized and as- 
similated. 

At first these visits should be made in company with 
their teacher of methods, and the work of a single 
class in one subject should be first observed. After 
such visits the teacher of methods in the given subject 
should discuss with the pupil-teachers the work ob- 
served. The pupil-teachers should first describe the 
work they have seen and specify the excellences noted, 
and tell why these thing are commendable and upon 
what laws of teaching they are based. Next, the 
pupil-teachers should question the teacher of methods 
as to the cause, purpose, or influence of things 
noted, and matters of doubtful propriety — if there be 
such — should be considered. Then the teacher in 
turn should question her pupil-teachers as to matters 
that seem to have escaped their notice, as to the mo- 
tive of the model-teacher, as to the reason for the 
order of treatment, or form of question, wherein lay 
the merit of her method, the secret of her power. 
When pupil-teachers have made such observations 
several times, with several teachers, and in several 



io6 Committee of Fifteen. 

subjects, tlie broader investigation may be made as to 
the organization of one of the model rooms, its daily 
programme of recitations and of study, the methods 
of discipline, the relations between pupils and teacher, 
the " school spirit," the school movements, and class 
progress. This work should be done before teaching 
groups or classes of pupils is attempted, and should 
form an occasional exercise during the period of prac- 
tice-teaching as a matter of relief and inspiration. If 
an artist requires the suggestive help of a good ex- 
ample that stirs his own originality, why should not 
a teacher ? 

The practice-school. 

During the course in methodology certain steps 
preparatory to practice-teaching may be taken. 1. 
The pupil-teacher may analyze the topic to be taught, 
noting essentials and incidentals, seeking the connec- 
tions of the subject with the mental possessions of the 
pupils to be considered and the sequences from these 
points of contact to the knowledge to be gained under 
instruction. 2. Next, plans of lessons may be pre- 
pared and series of questions for teaching the given 
subjects. 3. Giving lessons to fellow pupil-teachers 
leads to familiarity with the mechanism of class work, 
such as calling, directing, and dismissing classes, gives 
the beginner ease and self-confidence, leads to careful 
preparation of lessons, gives skill in asking questions, 
and in the use of apparatus. 

The practice-teaching should be in another school, 
preferably in a different building, and should com- 
mence with group-teaching in a recitation-room apart 
from the schoolroom. Actual teaching of small groups 
of children gives opportunity for the study of the 
child-mind in its efforts at reception and assimilation 
of new ideas, and shows the modifications in lesson 



Committee of Fifteen, 10.7 

plans that must be made to adapt the subject-mat- 
ter to the child's tastes and activities. But the inde- 
pendent charge for a considerable time of a school- 
room with, a full quota of pupils^ the pupil-teacher and 
the children being much, of the time the sole occupants 
of the room, — in short, the realization of ordinary 
school conditions, with the opportunity to go for ad- 
vice to a friendly critic, is the most valuable practice ; 
and no practice short of this can be considered of great 
value except as preparation for this chief form of 
preparatory practice. All this work should have its 
due proportion only, or evil may result. For example, 
lesson plans tend to formalism, to self-conceit, to work 
in few and narrow lines, to study of subjects rather 
than of pupils \ lessons to fellow-pupils make one 
self-conscious, hinder the growth ©f enthusiasm in 
work, and are entirely barren if carried beyond a very 
few exercises ; teaching groups of childrenfor consider- 
able time unfits the teacher for the double burden of 
discipline and instruction, to bear both of which 
simultaneously and easily is the teacher's greatest 
difficulty and most essential power. 

A critic-teacher should be appointed to the over- 
sight of two such pupil-teachers, each in charge of a 
schoolroom. The critic may also supervise one or 
more teachers practicing for brief periods daily with 
groups of children. 

The pupil-teachers are now to emphasize practice 
rather than theory, to work under the direction of one 
who regards the interests of the children quite as 
much as those of the teacher-in-training. The critic 
must admit the principles of education and general 
methods taught by the teacher of methodology, but 
she may have her own devices and even special meth- 
ods that need not be those of the teacher of method- 
ology. No harm will come to the teachers-in-training 



io8 Committee of Mfteeri. 

if they learn that principles must be assented to by 
all, but that methods may bear the stamp of the per- 
sonality of the teacher ; that all things must be con- 
sidered from the point of view of their effect upon the 
pupils ; the critic maintaining the claims of the chil- 
dren, the teacher of methods conforming to the laws 
of mind and the science of the subjects taught. The 
critics must teach for their pupil-teachers and show 
in action the justness of their suggestions. In this 
sense they are model-teachers as well as critics. 

The critic should, at the close of school, meet her 
pupil-teachers for a report of their experiences through 
the day : What they have attempted, how they have 
tried to do it, why they did so, and what success they 
gained. Advice as to overcoming difficulties, encour- 
agement under {rial, caution if need be, help for the 
work of to-morrow, occupy the hour. Above" all, the 
critic should be a true friend, a womanly and culti- 
vated woman, and an inspiring companion, whose 
presence is helpful to work and improving to per- 
sonality. 

Length of training-school course. 

There are three elements which determine the time 
to be spent in a training school — the time given to 
academic studies, the time given to professional 
studies, and the time given to practice. The sum of 
these periods will be the time required for the train- 
ing course. Taking these in the inverse order, let us 
consider how much time is required for practice work 
with puxDils. The time given to lesson outlines and 
practice with fellow pupil-teachers may be considered 
a part of the professional study rather than of prac- 
tice-teaching. The period of practice with pupils 
must not be too short, whether we consider the inter- 
ests of the pupils or of the teachers-in-training. An 



Committee of Fifteen. 109 

effort is usually made to counteract the effect upon 
the children of a succession of crude efforts of teach- 
ers beginning practice by strengthening the teaching 
and supervision through the employment of a consid- 
erable number of model and supervisory teachers, and 
by dividing the pupils into small groups, so that much 
individual work can be done. These arrangements, 
while useful for their purpose, destroy to a consider- 
able degree the usual conditions under which school 
work is to be done, and tend to render the teachers- 
in-training formal and imitative. 

The practice room should be, as far as may be, the 
ordinary school, with the difficulties and responsibil- 
ities that will be met later. The responsibility for 
order, discipline, progress, records, reports, communi- 
cation with parents and school authorities, must fall 
fully upon the young teacher, who has a friendly 
assistant to whom she can go for advice in the person 
of a wise and experienced critic, not constantly at 
hand, but constantly within reach. 

Between the critic and the teacher-in-training there 
should exist the most cordial and familiar relations. 
These relations are based on the one hand upon an 
appreciation of wisdom and kindness, on the other, 
upon an appreciation of sincerity and effort. The 
growth of such relations, and the fruitage which fol- 
lows their growth, require time. A half-year is not 
too long to be allotted for them. During this half- 
year experience, self-confidence and growth in power 
have been gained ; but the pupil-teacher is still not 
ready to be set aside to work out her own destiny. 
At this point she is just ready for marked advance, 
which should be helped and guided. To remain 
longer with her critic friend may cause imitation 
rather than independence, may lead to contentment 
and cessation of growth. She should now be trans- 



no Committee of Fifteen. 

ferred to the care of a second critic of a different 
personality, but of equal merit. The new critic is 
bound by her duty and her ambition to see that 
the first half year's advancement is maintained in the 
second. The pupil-teacher finds that excellence is 
not all upon one model. The value of individuality 
impresses her. She gains a view of solid principles 
wrapped in diverse characteristics. Her own indi- 
viduality rises to new importance, and the elements of 
a growth not at once to be checked start up within 
her. For the care of the second critic a second half 
year must be allowed, which extends the practice 
work with pupils through an entire school year. For 
the theoretical work a year is by general experience 
proven sufiS.cient. The ideal training course is, then, 
one of two years' length. 

Provision for the extended practice which is here 
recommended can be made only by city training- 
schools and by normal schools having connection with 
the schools of a city. To set apart a building of sev- 
eral rooms as a school of practice will answer the pur- 
pose only when there are very few teachers in train- 
ing. In order to give each pupil-teacher a year of 
practice the number of practice rooms must equal the 
number of teachers to be graduated annually from the 
training-school, be the number ten, fifty, or five hun- 
dred. In any considerable city a school for practice 
will not suflB.ce ; many schools for practice must be 
secured. This can be done by selecting one excellent 
teacher in each of a sufficient number of school build- 
ings, and making her a critic-teacher, giving her 
charge of two schoolrooms, in each of which is placed 
a pupil-teacher for training. 

This insures that the training shall be done as 
nearly as may be under ordinary conditions, brings 
the pupil-teachers at once into the general body of 



Commit t €6 of Fifteen, 1 1 1 

teachers, makes the corps of critics a leaven of zeal, 
and good teaching scattered among the schools. This 
body of critics will uplift the schools. More capable 
in the beginning than the average teacher, led to pro- 
fessional study, ambitious for the best things, they 
make greater progress than they otherwise would do, 
and are sufficient in themselves to inspire the general 
body of teachers. For the sake of the pupil-teachers, 
and the children, too, this plan is best. Its economy 
also will readily be apparent. This plan has been 
tried for several years in the schools of Providence, 
with results fully equal to those herein claimed. 

Tests of success. 

The tests of success in practice-teaching are in the 
main those to be applied to all teaching. Do her 
pupils grow more honest, industrious, polite ? Do 
they" admire their teacher ? Does she secure obedi- 
ence and industry only while demanding it, or has she 
influence that reaches beyond her presence ? Do her 
pupils think well and talk well ? As to the teacher 
herself : Has she sympathy and tact, self-reliance and 
originality, breadth and intensity ? Is she syste- 
matic, direct, and business-like ? Is she courteous, 
neat in person and in work ? Has she discernment 
of character and a just standard of requirement and 
attainment ? 

These are some of the questions one must answer 
before he pronounces any teacher a success or a 
failure. 

Admission to a training school assumes that the 
pupil has good health, good scholarship, good sense, 
good ability, and devotion to the work of teaching. 
If all these continue to be exhibited in satisfactory 
degree and the pupil goes through the prescribed 



112 Committee of Fifteen. 

course of study and practice, the diploma of the 
school should naturally mark the completion of this 
work. If it appears on acquaintance that a serious 
mistake has been made in estimating any of these 
elements, then, so soon as the mistake is fairly appar- 
ent and is probably a permanent condition, the pupil 
should be requested to withdraw from the work. 
This is not a case where the wheat and the tares 
should grow together until the harvest at graduation 
day or the examination preceding it. With such a 
foundation continually maintained, it is the duty of 
the school to conquer success for each pupil. 

Teaching does not require genius. Indeed, genius, 
in the sense of erratic ability, is out of place in the 
teacher's chair. Most good teachers at this close of 
the nineteenth century are made, not born; made 
from good material well fashioned. There is, how- 
ever, a possibility that some idiosyncrasy of charac- 
ter, not readily discovered until the test is made, 
may rise between the prospective teacher and her 
pupils, making her influence over them small or harm- 
ful. Such a defect, if it exist, will appear duriDg the 
practice-teaching, and the critic will discover it. This 
defect, on its first discovery, should be plainly pointed 
out to the teacher-in-training and her efforts should 
be joined with those of the critic in its removal. 

If this effort be a failure and the defect be one 
likely to harm the pupils hereafter to be taught, then 
the teacher-in-training should be informed and re- 
quested to withdraw from the school. There should 
be no test at the close of the school course to deter- 
mine fitness for graduation. Graduation should find 
the teacher serious in view of her responsibilities, 
hopeful because she has learned how success is to be 
attained, inspired with the belief that growth in hei- 



Committee of Fifteen, 113 

self and in her pupils is the great demand and the 
great reward. 

Training of teachers for secondary schools. 

Perhaps one-sixth of the great body of public 
school teachers in the United States are engaged in 
secondary work and in supervision. These are the 
leading teachers. They give educational tone to 
communities, as well as inspiration to the body of 
teachers. 

It is of great importance that they be imbued with 
the professional spirit springing from sound profes- 
sional culture. The very difficult and responsible 
positions that they fill demand ripe scholarship, 
more than ordinary ability, and an intimate knowl 
edge of the period of adolescence, which Eousseau so 
aptly styles the second birth. 

The elementary schools provide for the education 
of the masses. Our secondary schools educate our 
social and business leaders. The careers of our col- 
lege graduates, who mainly fill the important places 
in professional and political life, are determined 
largely by the years of secondary training. The col- 
lege or university gives expansion and finish, the 
secondary school gives character and direction. 

It should not beiorgotten that the superintendents 
of public schools are largely taken from the ranks of 
secondary teachers, and that the scholarship, quali- 
ties, and training required for the one class are nearly 
equivalent to that demanded for the other. 

Our high schools, too, are the source of supply for 
teachers in elementary schools. Hence the pedagogic 
influences exerted in the high school should lead to 
excellence in elementary teaching. 

The superintendent who with long foresight looks 



114 ' Committee of Fifteen. 

to the improvement of his schools will labor earnestly 
to improve and especially to professionalize the 
teaching in his high school. The management which 
makes the high school an independent portion of the 
school system, merely attached and loftily superior, 
which limits the supervision and influence of the 
superintendent to the primary and grammar grades, 
is short-sighted and destructive. 

There ought also to be a place and a plan for the 
training of teachers for normal schools. The great 
body of normal and training schools in the United 
States are secondary schools. Those who are to teach 
in these schools need broad scholarship, thorough 
understanding of educational problems, and trained 
experience. To put into these schools teachers whose 
scholarship is that of the secondary school and whose 
training is that of the elementary is to narrow and 
depress, rather than broaden and elevate. 

If college graduates are put directly into teaching 
without special study and training, they will teach as 
they have been taught. The methods of college pro- 
fessors are not in all cases the best, and, if they were, 
high school pupils are not to be taught nor disci- 
plined as college students. are. High school teaching 
and discipline can be that neither of the grammar 
school nor of the college, but is sui generis. To recog- 
nize this truth and the special differences is vital to 
success. This recognition comes only from much ex- 
perience at great loss and partial failure, or by 
happy intuition not usually to be expected, or by defi- 
nite instruction and directed practice. Success in 
teaching depends upon conformity to principles, and 
these principles are not a part of the mental equip- 
ment of every educated person. 

These considerations and others are the occasion of 
a growing conviction, widespread in this land, that 



Committee of Fifteen. 115 

secondary teachers should be trained for their work 
even more carefully than elementary teachers are 
trained. This conviction is manifested in the efforts 
to secure normal schools adapted to training teachers 
for secondary schools, notably in Massachusetts and 
New York, and in the numerous professorships of 
pedagogy established in rapidly increasing numbers 
in our colleges and universities. 

The training of teachers for secondary schools is in 
several essential respects the same as that for teach- 
ers of elementary schools. Both demand scholarship, 
theory, and practice. The degree of scholarship re- 
quired for secondary teachers is by common consent 
fixed at a collegiate education. Ko one — with rare 
exceptions — should be employed to teach in a high 
school who has not this fundamental preparation. 

It is not necessary to enter in detail into the work 
of theoretical instruction for secondary teachers. The 
able men at the head of institutions and departments 
designed for such work neither need nor desire advice 
upon this matter. And yet for the purposes of this 
report it may be allowable to point out a plan for the 
organization of a~secondary training school. 

Let it be supposed that two essentials have been 
found in one locality, (1) a college or university hav- 
ing a department of pedagogy and a department of 
post-graduate work; (2) a high school, academy, or 
preparatory school whose managers are willing to 
employ and pay a number of graduate students to 
teach under direction for a portion of each day. 
These two conditions being met, we will suppose that 
pedagogy is offered as an elective to the college 
seniors. 

Two years of instruction in the science and art of 
teaching are to be provided ; one, mostly theory with 
some practice, elective during the senior year ; the 



ii6 Committee of Fifteen. 

other, mostly practice with some theory, elective for 
one year as post-graduate work. 

During the senior year is to be studied : — 

The science of teaching. 

The elements of this science are : — 

I. Psychology in its physiological, apperceptive, 
and experimental features. The period of adoles- 
cence here assumes the prominence that childhood has 
in the psychological study preparatory to teaching in 
lower schools. This is the period of beginnings, the 
beginning of a more ambitious and generous life, a 
life having the future wrapped up in it; a transition 
period, of mental storm and stress, in which egoism 
gives way to altruism, romance has charm, and the 
social, moral, and religious feelings bud and bloom. 
To guide youth at this formative stage, in which an 
active fermentation occurs that may give wine or vine- 
gar according to conditions, requires a deep and sym- 
pathetic nature, and that knowledge of the changing 
life which supplies guidance wise and adequate. 

II. Methodology : A discussion of the principles 
of education and of the methods of teaching the 
studies of the secondary schools. 

III. School economy should be studied in a much 
wider and more thorough way than is required for 
elementary teachers. The school systems of Ger- 
many, France, England, and the leading systems of 
the United States should also be studied. 

ly. History of education, the tracing of modern 
doctrine back to its sources ; those streams of influ- 
ence now flowing and those that have disappeared in 
the sands of the centuries. 

V. The philosophy of education as a division of 
an all-involving philosophy of life and thought in 
which unity is found. 



Committee of Fifteen. 117 

The art of teachhig. 

This includes observation and practice. The ob- 
servation should include the work of different grades 
and of different localities, with minute and searching 
comparison and reports upon special topics. How 
does excellent primary work differ from excellent 
grammar grade work ? How do the standards of ex- 
cellence differ between grammar grades and high 
school grades ? Between high school and college 
work ? What are the arguments for and against co- 
education in secondary schools, as determined by ex- 
perience ? What are the upper and lower limits of 
secondary education as determined by the nature of 
the pupil's efforts ? 

In the college class in pedagogy much more than in 
the elementary normal school can the class itself be 
made to afford a means of practice to its members. 
Quizzes may be conducted by students upon the chap- 
ters of the books read or the lectures of the profes- 
sors. These exercises may have for their object 
review, or improved statement, or enlarged inference 
and application, and they afford an ample opportunity 
to cultivate the art of questioning, skill in which is 
the teacher's most essential accomplishment. 

The head of the department of pedagogy will, of 
course, present the essential methods of teaching, and 
the heads of other departments may lecture on meth- 
ods pertaining to their subject of study; or secondary 
teachers of known success may still better present the 
methods now approved in the several departments of 
secondary work. 

Post-graduate year. 

To those graduates who have elected pedagogy in 
their senior year may be offered the opportunity of 



ii8 Committee of Fifteen. 

further study in this department, with, "such other 
post-graduate work as taste and opportunity permit. 
From those selecting advanced work in pedagogy the 
board in charge of the affiliated secondary school 
should elect as many teachers for its school as are 
needed, employing them for two-thirds time at one- 
half the usual pay for teachers without experience. 
Under the professor of pedagogy of the college, the 
principal, and the heads of departments of the school 
these student-teachers should do their work, receiving 
advice, criticism, and illustration as occasion requires. 
The time for which they are employed would provide 
for two hours of class work and about one hour of 
clerical work or study while in charge of a school- 
room. These student-teachers should be given abun- 
dant opportunity for the charge of pupils while recit- 
ing or studying, at recess and dismissals, and should 
have all the responsibilities of members of the faculty 
of this school. Their work should be inspected as 
frequently as may be b}^ the heads of the departments 
in which they teach, by the principal of the school, 
and by the professor of pedagogy. These appoint- 
ments would be virtually fellowships with an oppor- 
tunity for most profitable experience. 

In the afternoon of each day these students should 
attend to college work and especially to instruction 
from the professor in pedagogy, who could meet them 
occasionally with the heads of the departments under 
whose direction they are working. 

On Saturdays a seminary of two hours' duration 
might be held, conducted by the professor of pedagogy 
and attended by the student-teachers and the more 
ambitious teachers of experience in the vicinity. 
These seminaries would, doubtless, be of great profit 
to both classes of participants, and the greater to each 
because of the other. (Such a training school for 



Committee of Fifteen. 119 

secondary teachers in connection with Brown Univer- 
sity and the Providence high school is contemplated 
for the coming year.) 

It will not be needful to specify further the advan- 
tages to the student-teachers. The arrangement like 
wise affords advantage to the aflQliated school, espec- 
ially in the breadth of view this work would afford 
to the heads of departments, the intense desire it 
would beget in them for professional skill, the num- 
ber of perplexing problems which it would force them 
to attempt the solution of. 

The visits of the professor of pedagogy, and the 
constant comparison he would make between actual 
and ideal conditions, would lead him to seek the im- 
provement, not only of the students in practice, but 
of the school as a whole. 

When several earnest and capable people unite in a 
mutual effort to improve themselves and their work, 
all the essential conditions of progress are present. 

Horace S. Tarbell, Chairman, 
Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I. 

Edward Brooks, 
Superintendent of Schools, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Thomas M. Balliet, 
Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Mass. 

Newton C. Dougherty, 
Superintendent of Schools, Peoria, 111. 

Oscar H. Cooper, 
Superintendent of Schools, Galveston, Tex. 



Dissent from Dr. Harris' Report. 



BY JAMES M. GREENWOOD, OF KANSAS CITY. 

I dissent from the majority report of the Committee in regard 
to the following points : — 

Arithmetic 

1. As TO FRACTIONS : In teaching arithmetic there does not 
exist any greater difficulty in getting small children to grasp the 
nature of the fraction as such than in getting them to grasp the 
idea of the simpler whole numbers. It is true that the fractions 
^, ^, ^, etc., as symbols, are a little more complex than 
are the single digits ; but as to the real meaning, when once the 
fractional idea has been properly developed by the teacher and 
the significance of the idea apprehended by the pupil, it is as 
easily understood as any other simple truth. Children get the 
idea of half, third, or quarter of many things long before they 
enter school, and they will as readily learn to add, subtract, 
multiply, and divide fractions as they will whole numbers. In 
using fractions they will draw diagrams and pictures represent- 
ing the processes of work as quickly and easily as they illustrate 
similar work with integers. It is, of course, assumed that the 
teacher knows how to teach arithmetic to children, or rather, 
how to teach the children how to teach themselves. There is 
really no valid argument why children in the second, third, and 
fourth years in school should not master the fundamental oper- 
ations in fractions. Not only this, they will put the more com- 
mon fractions into the technique of percentage, and do this as 
well in the second and third grades as at any other time in their 
future progress. There is only one new idea involved in this 
operation, and that consists in giving an additional term — per 
cent. — to the fractional symbol. When one number is a part of 
another, it may be regarded as a fractional part or as such a 
per cent, of it. A great deal of percentage is thus learned by 
the pupils early in the course. Children are not hurt by learn^ 
ing. Standing still and lost motion kill, 



Committee of Fifteen. 121 

Every recitation should reach the full swing of the learner's 
mind, including all his acquisitions on any given topic. But if 
the teaching of fractions be deferred, as it usually is in most 
schools, the time may be materially shortened by teaching addi- 
tion and subtraction of fractions together. This is simple 
enough if different fractions having common denominators 
are used at first, such as | -f | = ?, and | — | = ? Then the 
next step, after sufficient drill on this case, is to take two frac- 
tions (simple) of different units of value, as \-\' \=^ "^i and 
\ — \= ? Multiplication and division may be treated similarly. 

In decimals, the pupil is really confronted by a simpler form 
of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions. 

Devices and illustrations of a material kind are necessary to 
build up in the pupil's mind at the beginning a clear concept 
of a tenth, etc., etc., and then to show that one-tenth written 
as a decimal is only a shorthand way of writing ^V as a common 
fraction, and so on. He sees very soon that the decimal is 
only a shorthand common fraction, and this notion he must 
hold to. This is the vital point in decimals. The idea that 
they can be changed into common fractions and the reverse at 
will establishes the fact in the pupil's mind that they are com- 
mon fractions and not uncommon ones. Eixing the decimal 
point will, in a short time, take care of itself. 

In teaching arithmetic the steps are : (1) developing the sub- 
ject till each pupil gets a clear conception of it ; (2) necessary 
drill to fix the process ; (3) connecting the subject with all that 
has preceded it ; (4) its applications ; (5) the pupil's ability to 
sum up clearly and concisely what he has learned. 

2. As TO ABRIDGMENT : Under this head, I hold that a course 
in arithmetic, including simple numbers, fractions, tables of 
weights and measures, percentage, and interest, and numerical 
operations in powers, does not fit a pupil to begin the study of 
algebra. That while he may carry the book under his arm to 
the schoolroom, he is too poorly equipped to make headway on 
this subject, and instead of finishing up algebra in a reasonable 
length of time, he is kept too long at it, with a strong probability 
of his becoming disgusted with it. 

There are subjects, however, in the common school arithmetic 
that may be dropped out with great advantage, to wit, all but 
the simplest exercises in compound interest, foreign exchange, 
all foreign moneys (except reference tables of values) , annui- 
ties, alligation, progression; and the entire subjects of percent- 



122 Committee of Fifteen. 

age and interest should be condensed into about twenty pages. 
Cancellation, factoring, proportion, evolution, and involution 
should be retained. Cancellation and factoring should be 
strongly emphasized, owing to their immense value in shorten- 
ing work in arithmetic, algebra, and in more advanced subjects. 
Some drill in the Metric System should not be omitted. 

3. As TO MENTAL ARITHMETIC : Till the end of the fourth 
year the pupil does not need a text-book of mental arithmetic. 
So far his work in arithmetic should be about equally divided 
between written and mental. At the beginning of the fifth year, 
in addition to his written arithmetic, he should begin a mental 
arithmetic and continue it three years, reciting at least four 
mental arithmetic lessons each week. The length of the recita- 
tion should be twenty minutes. A pupil well drilled in mental 
arithmetic at the end of the seventh year, if the school age begins 
at six, is far better prepared to study algebra than the one who 
has not had such a drill. There are a few problems in arithme- 
tic that can be solved more easily by algebra than by the ordi- 
nary processes of arithmetic, but there are many numerical 
problems in equations of the first degree that can be more easily 
handled by mental arithmetic than by algebra. To attack arith- 
metical problems by algebra is very much like using a tremen- 
dous lever to lift a feather. Those who have found a great 
stumbling-block in arithmetical '' conundrums " have, if the in- 
side facts were known, been looking in the wrong direction. A 
deficiency of " number-brain-cells " will afford an adequate 
explanation. 

4. Rearrangement of subjects : There should be a rear- 
rangement of the topics in arithmetic so that one subject natu- 
rally leads up to the next. As an illustration, it is easily seen 
that whole numbers and fractions can be treated together, and 
that with U. S. money, when the dime is reached, is the proper 
time to begin decimals, and that when a " square " in surface 
measure first comes up, the next step is the square of a number 
as well as its square root, and that solid measure logically lands 
the learner among cubes and cube-roots. When he learns that 
1728 cubic inches make one cubic foot he is prepared to find the 
edge of the cube. What is meant here is pointing the way to 
the next above. All depends upon the teacher's ability to lead 
the pupil to see conditions and relations. My contention is that 
truth, so far as one is capable of taking hold of it when it is 
properly presented, is always a simple affair. 



Committee of Fifteen. 123 

5. As TO ALGEBRA : If algebra be commenced at the middle 
of the seventh year, let the pupil go at it in earnest, and keep 
at it till he has mastered it. Here the best opportunities will be 
afforded him to connect his algebraic knowledge to his arith- 
metical knowledge. He builds the one on top of the other. 
The skillful teacher always insists that the learner shall estab- 
lish and maintain this relationship between the two subjects. 
To switch around the other way appears to me to be the same 
as to omit certain exercises in the common algebra, because 
they are more brieJSy and elegantly treated in the calculus. It 
is admitted that a higher branch of mathematics often throws 
much light on the lower branches, but these side-lights should 
be employed for the purpose of leading the learner onward to 
broader generalizations. Unless one sees the lower clearly, the 
higher is obscure. Build solidly the foundation on arithmetic 
— written and mental — and the higher branches will be more 
easily mastered and time saved. 

History of the U^tited States. 

In teaching this branch in the public schools, there does not 
appear, so far as I can see, any substantial reason why the 
pupils should not study and recite the history of the Eebellion 
in the same manner that they do the Revolutionary War. 
The pupils discuss the late war and the causes that led to it 
with an impartiality of feeling that speaks more for their good 
sense and clear judgment than any other way by wliich their 
knowledge can be tested. They may not get hold of all the 
causes involved in that conflict, but they get enough to under- 
stand the motives which caused the armies to fight so heroic- 
ally, and why the people, both North and South, staked every- 
thing on the issue. Just as the men who faced each other for 
four years and met so often in a death grapple will sit down 
now and quietly talk over their trials, sufferings, and conflicts, 
so do their children talk over these same stirring scenes. 
They, too, so far as my experience extends, are singularly free 
from bitterness and prejudice. It is certainly a period of his- 
tory that they should study. 

The spelling-book. 

In addition to the "spelling-lists," I would supplement with 
a good spelling-book. So far, no "word-list," however well se- 
lected, has supplied the place of a spelling-book. All those schools 



124 Committee of Fifteen. 

that threw out the spelling-book and undertook to teach spell- 
ing incidentally or by word-lists failed, and for the same reason 
that grammar, arithmetic, geography, and other branches can- 
not be taught incidentally as the pupil or the class reads Kobin- 
son Crusoe, or any similar work. It is an independent study 
and as such should be pursued. 



BY CHARLES B. GILBERT, OF ST. PAUL. 

While affixing my signature to the report of this Committee, 
as expressing substantial agreement with most of its leading 
propositions, I beg leave also to indicate my dissent from cer- 
tain of its recommendations and to suggest certain additions 
which, in my judgment, the report requires. 

1. There are other forms of true correlation which should be 
included with the four mentioned in the first part of the report 
and which should be as clearly and fully treated as are these 
four. 

The first is that form of correlation which is popularly under- 
stood by the name, and which is also called by some writers 
concentration, co-ordination, unification, and alludes in general 
to a division of studies into content and form; by content 
meaning that upon which it is fitting that the mind of the child 
should dwell, and by form the means or modes of expression 
by which thoughts are communicated. Or, it may be thus ex- 
pressed : The true content of education is (1), philosophy or 
the knowledge of man as to his motives and hidden springs of 
action indicated in history and literature, and (2) science, the 
knowledge of nature, and its manifestations and laws. Its 
form is art, which is the deliberate, purposeful, and effective 
expression to others of that which has been produced within 
man by contact with other men and with nature, and is com- 
monly referred to as divided into various arts, such as reading, 
writing, drawing, making, and modeling. The relation of con- 
tent and form is that of principle and subordinate, the latter 
receiving its chief value from the former. In a true education 
they are so presented to the mind of the chUd that he instinct- 
ively and unconsciously grasps this relation and is thereby 
lifted into a higher plane of thinking and living than if the 
various arts are taught, as they too commonly ai:e, without 
reference to a noble content. This relation of form to con- 
tent is vgauely referred to in the report, but nowhere definitely 



Committee of Fifteen. 125 

treated. It seems to me that it is a true form of correlation, 
and, as such, deserves special and definite treatment. More- 
over, it is at present much in the minds of the teachers of this 
country, often in forms that are misleading and harmful. The 
fact that it adds the important element of interest to the dry 
details of common school life makes it especially attractive to 
progressive and earnest teachers, and this Committee should 
recognize its importance and make such an utterance upon it as 
will guide the average teacher to a clear comprehension of its 
meaning and to a wise use of it in the schoolroom. 

Second, there is a still higher form of correlation which is 
definitely referred to later in the report as that ' ' of the several 
branches of human learning in the unity of the spiritual view 
furnished by religion to our civilization." This in the report 
is assigned absolutely to the province of higher education. 
While I do not wish to dissent wholly from this view, since it 
is doubtless true that this higher unity cannot be comprehen- 
sively stated for the use of a child, yet a wise teacher can so 
present subjects to even a young child that a sense of the unity 
of all knowledge will, to a certain degree, be unconsciously 
developed in his mind. In regard to certain of the great divis- 
ions of human knowledge, this relation is so evident that they 
cannot be properly presented at all unless the relation be made 
clear. Such studies are history and geography. 

2. The recommendations upon the subject of language should 
be broadened to cover the production of good English by 
the child himself, with the suggestion of suitable topics and 
proper methods. This report confines itself to the absorptive 
side of education and ignores that development of power over 
nature, man, and self, which comes from free exercise of facul- 
ties and free expression of thought. The study of language 
as something for the child to use himself, the great means by 
which he is to assert his place in civilization, and exert his 
influence for good, is nowhere referred to except in the vaguets 
way. This statement in regard to language applies almost 
equally well to drawing, and here is made evident the impor- 
tance of the form of correlation to which I have just referred. 
The proper material for the training of the child in expression 
is that which is furnished by the study of man and nature. 
His mind being filled with high themes, he asserts his individu- 
ality, expresses himself in regard to them, and thereby gains at 
once both a closer and clearer comprehension of what he has 



126 Committee of Fifteen. 

studied, and also the power by wMcli he may become a factor 
in his generation. 

3. I would wish to omit the word " weekly " where it occurs 
in the discussion of the subjects of general history and science, 
unless it be understood to mean that an amount of time in the 
school year equivalent to sixty minutes weekly be given to 
each of these subjects. It is often better to condense these 
studies into certain portions of the year, giving more time to 
them each week, and using them as the basis, to a certain 
degree, of language work. I believe that, especially with 
young children, clearer concepts are produced by such con- 
nected study, pursued for fewer weeks, than by lessons seven 
days apart. 

4. In my judgment manual training should not be limited to 
the seventh and eighth grades, but should begin in the kinder- 
garten with the simple study of form from objects and the 
reproduction in paper of the objects presented, and should ex- 
tend, in a series of carefully graded lessons, through all the 
grades, leaving, however, the heavier tools, such as the plane, 
for the seventh and eighth grades. By these means an interest 
is kept up in the various human industries, sympathy for all 
labor is created, and a certain degree of skill is developed; 
moreover, the interest of the pupils in their school is greatly en- 
hanced. Manual training has often proved the magnet by 
which boys at the restless age have been kept in school instead 
of leaving for some gainful occupation. 

5. I desire to suggest that geometry may be so taught as to 
be a better mathematical study than algebra to succeed or accom- 
pany arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades. I do not 
refer particularly to inventional geometry, to which the Com- 
mittee accords a slighting attention, but to constructive geom- 
etry and the simplest propositions in demonstrative geometry, 
thus involving the comprehension of the elementary geometric 
forms and their more obvious relations. This study may be 
made of special interest in connection with manual training and 
drawing, while it presents fewer difficulties to the immature 
mind than the abstractions of algebra, since it connects more 
directly with the concrete, by which its presentation may often 
be aided. 

6. While agreeing fully with the majority of the Committee 
that the full scientific method should not be applied to the study 
of elementary science by young children, yet I am compelled to 



Committee of Fifteen. 127 

favor more of experimentation and observation by the child, 
and less of telling by the teacher than the report would seem 
to favor. 

7. I would go farther than the majority of the Committee, 
and insist that, except in rare cases, there should be no special- 
ization of the teaching force below the high school, and that 
even in the first years of the high school, so far as possible, 
specialization should be subordinated to a general care of the 
child's welfare and oversight of his methods of study, which 
are impossible when a corps of teachers give instruction, each 
in one subject, and see the student only during the hour of 
recitation. 

8. While in the main I agree with the bald statements under 
the head '•'• Correlation by synthesis of studies," since reference 
is made to only a very artificial mode of synthesis not at all in 
vogue in this country, I must dissent emphatically from this 
portion of the report as by inference condemning a most im- 
portant department of correlation, to which I have referred 
earlier. The doctrine of concentration is not necessarily arti- 
ficial ; rather it refers to the higher unity, of which this Com- 
mittee has spoken in glowing terms as belonging to the prov- 
ince of higher education. It also includes the division of the 
school curriculum into content and form, which this Committee 
inferentially adopts in its treatment of language. I do not be- 
lieve, any more than do the majority of the Committee, that 
the entire course of study can be literally and exactly centred 
about a single subject, nor do I believe in any artificial correla- 
tion; but there is a natural relation of all knowledges, which 
this Committee admits in various places, and which is the basis 
of a proper synthesis of studies, according to the psychological 
principle of apperception. 

9. If by the term " oral," as applied to lessons in biography 
and in natural science, the Committee means, as the word 
would imply, that the instruction is to be given in the form of 
lectures by the teacher, I cannot in full agree with the Commit- 
tee's conclusions. As I have already stated, in natural science 
the work should be largely that of observation, and in history 
and biography, while in the very lowest grades the teachers 
should tell the children stories, as soon as it is possible the 
desired information should be obtained by the student through 
reading. To this end the reading lesson in school should be 
properly correlated with his other studies, and he should be 



12$ Committee of Fifteen. 

advised as to his home reading. The information thus obtained 
should be the subject of conversation in the class, and should 
furnish the material for much of the written language work of 
the children. 

10. I must dissent emphatically and entirely from that por- 
tion of the report which recommends that a text-book in gram- 
mar be introduced into the fifth year of the child's school life. 
It is a question in my mind whether it would not be better if the 
text-book were not introduced into the grades below the high 
school at all. Certainly it should not appear before the sev- 
enth year. Such knowledge of grammar as will familiarize the 
child with the structure of the sentence, the basis of all lan- 
guage and as will enable him to use correctly forms of speech 
which the necessities of expression require, should be given orally 
by the teacher in connection with the child's written work, when 
needed ; but against the introduction of a text-book upon gram- 
mar, the most abstruse of all the subjects of the school curricu- 
lum, when the pupil is not more than ten years old, I must protest. 
Instead of that, the child should devote much time, some every 
day, to writing upon proper themes in the best English he can 
command, furnishing occasion to the teacher to correct such 
errors as he may make, and acquiring by use acquaintance with 
the correct forms of grammar. If, as will doubtless be the 
case in most cities, local conditions render the introduction of 
Latin into the eighth grade inadvisable, this study of grammar 
may be made in that grade somewhat more intensive. 

11. If by a text-book in geography is meant that which is 
commonly understood by the term, and not simply geographical 
reading matter, in my judgment, it should not be introduced 
earlier than the fifth year. 

These suggestions and expressions of dissent, if approved by 
the Committee, would necessitate some change in the programme 
submitted, the mo^t important of which would be the making 
room for the production of English in the grades. This could 
be provided in the first and second grades by taking some of the 
time devoted to penmanship and doing the work partly in con- 
nection with the reading classes. In the third and fourth grades 
it should take some of the time devoted to penmanship and 
should be studied also in connection with geography and reading, 
and in the fifth and sixth grades it should take all of the time 
given to grammar. 

I regret to be compelled to express dissent upon so many 



Committee of Fifteen. 129 

points, but as most of them appear to me vital and as the differ- 
ences appear to be not merely superficial but fundamental, 
affecting and affected by one's entire educational creed, I cannot 
do otherwise. To most of the report I most gladly give my 
assent andapproval. 

■ BY L. H. JONES, OF CLEVELAND. 

1 agree most heartily with the main features of the foregoing 
Teport of the sub-committee on correlation of studies. It is so 
admirable in its analysis of subjects and in its statement of 
comparative education values, and so suggestive in its practical 
applications to teaching, that I regret to find myself appearing 
in any way^to dissent from its conclusions. Indeed, my princi- 
pal objection is not against anything contained in the report 
(unless it be against a possible inference which might be drawn 
at one point), but it refers rather to what seems to me to be an 
omission. 

In addition to all the forms of correlation recommended in the 
report, it seems to me possible to make a correlation of subjects 
in a programme in such way that the selection of subject-matter 
may be to some extent from all fields of knowledge. These 
selections should be such as are related to one another so as to 
be mutually helpful in acquisition. They should be the main 
features of knowledge in the different departments. 

These different departments from which the chosen subjects 
should be taken must be fundamental ones and must be suflS- 
ciently numerous to represent universal culture. The report 
itself indicates conclusively what these are. 

Reference is made in the report to various attempts that have 
been made to correlate subjects of study. 

A very just criticism is made upon that attempt at correlation 
by the use of the story of Robinson Crusoe as a centre of correla- 
tion. It is distinctly pointed out in the report that the expe- 
riences of Robinson Crusoe are lacking in many of the elements 
of universal culture, and in many elements of education needed 
to adjust the individual properly to the civilization of our time 
and country. It is equally evident that the attempt to make 
this story the centre of correlation leads directly to trivial exer- 
cises in other subjects in order to make them "correlate" with 
Robinson Crusoe. It is also shown in the report that it natu- 
rally leads to fragmentary knowledge of many subjects very 
anuch inferior to that clear, logically connected knowledge of a 



130 Committee of Fijteeii. 

subject which may be had by pursuing it without reference to- 
correlating it with all others. 

It is at this point that in my judgment a wrong inference is- 
permitted by the report. 

It does not, as it seems to me, follow that, because correlation^ 
based on Robinson Crusoe is a failure, all correlations having 
the same general purpose Avill necessarily prove failures. For 
my own part, I do notbelieve that correlation needs any •' centre,"^ 
outside the child and its natural activities. If, however, it 
seems wiser to give special prominence to any given field of 
acquisition, it should, in my judgment, be accorded to language 
and its closely related subjects — reading, spelling, writing, com- 
posing, study of literature, etc., etc. Indeed, language as a 
mode of expression is organically related to thinking, in all 
fields of knowledge, as form is related to content. A '' system" 
or ^' programme" of correlation on this basis would seek for 
fundamental ideas in all the leading branches and make them 
themes of thought and occasions of language exercises. The 
selections would omit all trivialities in all subjects, and would' 
not attempt to correlate for the mere sake of correlation : but 
would seek to correlate wherever by such correlation kindred 
themes may be made to illuminate one another. To illustrate, 
concrete problems in arithmetic would be sought that wouldi 
clearly develop and illustrate mathematical ideas and their appli- 
cation ; but in a secondary way these problems would be sought 
for in the various departments of concrete knowledge — geogra- 
phy, history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, politi- 
cal, industrial, or domestic economy. But none of these themes 
would be so relied upon for problems as to compel one to choose 
unreasonable or trivial relations on which to base them. The 
problems themselves should represent true and important facts 
and relations of the other subjects as surely and rigidly as they^ 
should involve correct mathematical principles ; and all such 
exercises should be rightly related to the child's education in 
language. 

In like manner, when a child is engaged in nature study of 
any kind, some valuable problems in mathematics may be found 
rightly related both to the subject directly in hand and the 
child's natural progress in arithmetic. Also many of the lessons 
in nature study are directly related to some of the finest liter- 
ature ever produced, in which analogies of nature are made the 
means of expression for the finest and most delicate of the human. 



Cominittee of Fifteen. 131 

experiences. When the child has mastered tlie physical facts 
on which the literary inspiration is based is the true time to give 
him the advantage of the study of such literature. These ideas 
are not only rightly related to one another, but to the mind itself. 
It is, so to speak, the nascent moment when the mind can easily 
and fully master what might else remain an impenetrable mys- 
tery ; and all because subjects and occasion have come into happy 
conjunction. 

This is not the place in which to attempt any elaboration of 
such a system of correlation. But I feel that its absence from 
the report may make many persons feel that the latter is so far 
incomplete. 



BY WILLIAM H. MAXWELL, OF BROOKLYN. 

With the main lines of thought in this report I find myself in 
agreement. With many of its details, however, I am not in 
accord. I regret to have to express my dissent from its conclu- 
sions in the following particulars : — 

1. The report makes too little of the uses of grammar as sup- 
plying canons of criticism which enable the pupil to correct his 
own English, and as furnishing a key (grammatical analysis) 
that gives him the power to see the meaning of obscure or in- 
volved sentences. 

2. For the study of literature, complete works are to be pre- 
ferred to the selections found in school readers. 

3. That species of language exercise known as paraphrasing 
I regard as harmful. 

4. The study of number should not be omitted from the first 
year in school. Practice in the primary operations of arith- 
metic should not be omitted from the seventh and eighth years. 
The quadratic equation should be reserved for the high school. 

5. The foreign language introduced into the elementary 
school course should be a modern language — French or Ger- 
man. Latin should be reserved for those who have time and 
opportunity to master its literature. 

6. In the general programme of studies, the school day is 
cut up into too many short periods. The tendency of such a 
programme as that in the text would be to destroy repose of 
mind and render reflection almost an impossibility. 

7. I desire to express my agreement with the opinions 
stated in Sections 2, 3, 6, and 9 of Mr. Gilbert's dissenting 
opinion; and, in the main, with what Mr. Jones says on the 
correlation of studies. 



Dissent from Dr. Draper's Report. 



BY EDWIN P. SEAVER, BOSTON. 

I find myself in general accord with the doctrines of the 
report. There is only one feature of it from which I feel 
obliged to dissent, and that is an important though not neces- 
sarily a vital one. I refer to the office of school director. I 
see no need of such an officer elected by the people, and I do 
see the danger of his becoming a part of the political organiza- 
tion for the dispensation of patronage. 

All power and authority in school affairs should reside ulti- 
mately in the board of education, consisting of not more than 
eight persons appointed by the mayor of the city, to hold office 
four years, two members retiring annually and eligible for re- 
appointment once and no more. This board should appoint as 
its chief officer a superintendent of instruction, whose tenure 
should be during good behavior and efficiency, and whose pow- 
ers and duties should be to a large extent defined by statute 
law, and not wliolly or chiefly by the regulations of the board 
of education. The superintendent of instruction should have 
a seat and voice but not a vote in the board of education. The 
board of education should also appoint a business agent, and 
define his powers and duties in relation to all matters of build- 
ings, repairs, and supplies, substantially as set forth in the 
report in relation to the school director. 

All teachers should be appointed and annually reappointed 
or recommended by the superintendent of instruction, until 
after a sufficient probation they are appointed on a tenure dur- 
ing good behavior and efficiency. 

All matters relating to courses of study, text-books, and ex- 
aminations should be left to the superintendent and his assist- 
ants, constituting a body of professional experts who should be 
regarded as alone competent to deal with such matters, and 
should be held accountable therefor to the board of education 
only in a general way, and not in particular details. 



Committee of Fifteen. 133 

BY ALBERT G. LANE, CHICAGO. 

I concur in the recommendations of the sub-committee on 
the Organization of City School Systems^as summarized in the 
concluding portion of the report, omitting in item third the 
words, ''And that it be constituted of two branches acting 
against each other." Omit fifth, " But we think^it preferable 
that he be chosen in the same way that members of the board 
are chosen and be given veto power upon^the acts of the board." 
I recommend that the veto power be given to the president of 
the board. 



Discussion on Report of Dr. Harris. 



FbaNK M. McMueey, Franklin School, Buffalo ; My remarks 
have no reference to the dissenting opinions, but will be oocfiaed to 
the correlation in the main body of the report. So far, we have 
listened to the definition of correlation ; my remarks refer to that, 
and to its inflaence on the course of stndy. 

The address by Miss Arnold last night referred to correlation. 
That lecture is not in accord with the report of fiye in regard to 
this subject. We have been using two synonyms for correlation — 
oooidination and concentration. Many persons have gotten their 
definition through their ideas of concentration. People have in 
mind, as I understand it, mainly the relation of studies to one an- 
other. Let mo give one or two samples in addition to last night's 
suggestions. Let me refer to Egypt. The geography will natur- 
ally take the Nile, the drawing will take up cardboard work, etc., 
the pupil will deal with the pyramid and the triangle in mathe- 
matics, and with language work in the whole subject. I give that 
as a simple illustration of concentration. 

I turn to the part of the report where they take up correlation 
by synthesis of studies; that, as I understand it, was the thought 
in the mind of Mies Arnold, and it is what is in my own mind. 
They take up the subj 9ct of Bobinson Crusoe. I think they should 
look into it fuither, but it is not my purpose to defend Bobinson 
Crusoe. They have taken the story of Bobinson Crusoe as a type 
and they have condemned that aa a type. We may think they 
aim mainly at the story of Bobinson Crusoe alone, but they 
say, '' Your committee would call attention in this connec- 
tion to the importance of the pedagogical principle of analy- 
sis and isolation as preceding synthesis and correlation. There 
should be rigid isolation of the elements of each branch for the 
purpose of getting a clear perception of what is individual and pe- 
culiar in a special province of learning." 

They warn us against having studies closely tied together. They 
do not realize, as it seems to me, that the chief fault of our present 
studies is that they do not support each other. The report is op- 
(posed from principle to this kind of correlation. They refer later 



Committee of Fifteen, 135 

to this matter in these words : " Yonr oommittee has already men- 
ticmed a Bpeoiea of faulty correlation wherein the attempt is made 
to study all the hranohes in each, misapplying Jacotot'a maxim, 
' all is in all.' '' Farther than that, they show a large lack of 
sympathy with this point. They have no allasion to the fact that 
the different sciences have a relationship with one another. By 
their omissions, as well as their positive statements, they show their 
opposing attitude toward correlation. 

They talk about having a proper sequence in the studies, — they 
do not insist upon it from principle. They say, *' The most prac- 
tical knowledge of all, it will be admitted, is a knowledge of 
human nature, — a knowledge that enables one to combine with his 
fellow-men and to share with them the physical and spiritual 
wealth of the race. Of this high character as humanizing or civil- 
izing are the favorite works of literature found in the school read- 
ers, about one hundred and fifty English and American writers 
being drawn upon for the material." In other words, they are in 
sympathy with the text-book readers. In enforcing that point 
further, " In the first three years the reading should be limited to 
pieces in the colloquial style, but selections from the classics of the 
language in prose and poetry shall be read to the pupil from time 
to time." " In the years from the fifth to the eighth there should 
be some reading of entire storiep, such as Gulliver's Travels, Rob- 
inson Crusoe," and so forth. 

As I understand it, we should have wholes in literature from the 
begn^niog. There are sixty pages in this report, only two of them 
refer to the subject of concentration, and they condemn that subject 
Irom principle. Thay show that they do not, from principle, favor 
4he idea of connected thought. That is my first point — opposition 
to the whole matter. [Applause.] 

The next point is, What do they discuss ? [Laughter.] They 
have four points in their definition of correlation. The fourth point 
is the chief subject. " Your committee understands by correlation 
of studies the selection and arrangement in order of sequence of 
>sach objects of study as shall give the child an insight into the 
world that he lives in, and a command over his resources snob as is 
obtained by healthful ccoperation with one's fellows. In a word, 
the chief consideration to which all others are to be subordinated, 
in the opinion of your committee, is this rf qairement ef the civil- 
ization into which the child is born as determining what he shall 
fltndy in school." There is the old idea of study, in which, from 
the adult standpoint, we decide that wbat the child will use as a 
man shall constitute his course. We have had the three B's and 



136 Committee of Fifteen. 

we have tended to kill the children. The new edaoation is barad 
OB obild stndy, appereeption, and interest. We have reached th& 
eonolusion that knowledge is not primarily for the sake of knowl- 
edge, but for use, and the only condition under which the idea» 
will be active is that they shall appeal to the child and shall fit his 
nature. Child study, interest, and apperception demand that the 
chief factor shall be the nature of the child — that is not the atti-^ 
tnde of this committee of five. " Your committee is of the opinion 
that psychology of both kinds, physiological and introspective, can 
hold only a subordinate place in the settlement of questions relat- 
ing to the correlation of studies. The branches to be studied and 
the extent to which they are studied will be determined mainly by 
the demands of one's civilization.'' Psychology, in a plain state- 
ment, " will largely determine the methods of instruction, th& 
order of taking up the several topics so as to adapt the school work 
to the growth of the pupil's capacity." In other words, the com- 
mittee have failed to be inflnenoed as to a course cf study by other 
considerations than the demands of civilization. They state plainly 
that psychology shall be a subordinate matter in determining enr° 
riculnm. The fact is to be seen in their course of study, Reading, 
nature study, and history are the principal subjects, but in the 
minds of the committee the principal subjects are reading, writing, 
etc., for the first three years. I do not believe it. In the first 
three years, readine pieces ; in other words, the first three years do 
not deal prima: ily in rich ideas. One objection to Robinson Crneoe 
— " It omits cities, governments, the world commerce, the inter- 
national process, the church, the newspaper, and book from view.'^ 
They are not in sympathy with the child. I would choose Robin- 
son Crusoe because it does not deal with subjects which are outside 
the child's interest. 



F. W. Pabkbr, Cook Ccunty Ncrmalj Chicago: When I moved,, 
two years ago, the appointment of this committee, I had in mind 
the careful study of the whole matter of correlation that teachers 
in this country ehould get from the highest sources the doctrine 
and the highest eriticiem, — that a report should be presented 
which should follow the greatest report upon education in this 
century, — the report of the Committee of Ten. I have not had 
time to study this report and can, therefore, say very little upon it.^ 
These subjects should be studied with the greatest care. It seems 
to me that there are some general criticisms which may be made in 
the brief time at my command. 



Committee of Fifteen. 13^ 

We oannot doubt that these gentlemen have made the moat care- 
ful study of the docti ns of Herbert and cf his dieciplee,— ZilW; 
Stoyj and Rein ; tbey have alao bad their eye upon the diatiDguished 
students of this dootriue in this ocuntry. The failure of this re- 
port is that they haven't even given cs the fnii(?aDoeDtal doctrine 
of Herbart. There is no docbt that the Hetbariian dootrine and 
all other doctrines of concentration are ignored in their fundamental 
essentials. That is what this committee has left out — it is the old 
story, the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out, or to put it a little 
more mildly, Hamlet kicked out. It seems that this doctrine is 
the only dootiine which furnishes a grand working h:;potheBiB to 
the teachers of the world. It Bhould be txamiced moet carefully^ 
and what oannot bear the closest criticism should be rejected. The 
five, with the dissent of the Western men, have not deemed it 
worthy of this attention and bave r«j«cted it in toto. 

Poor old Robinson Grnsoe bears the brunt, notwithstanding ous 
esteemed friends of the Normal University, who wif«h to interest the 
children in something. Sometimes we go into schools where thsre 
k not much interest, especially in spellirg acd grama ar. I laav@ 
the defense of Robinson Crusoe to Mr. McMurry. 

The other reference is to lacgusge. ''It is not wise to stop a 
child to correct his mistakes in grammar"! ** The development 
of language cannot be organically related to the development of 
thought"! It is one of the fundamental principles, if I under- 
stand it, that the development of thought should have as a neces- 
sity the evolution of language. This, says tbe report, oannot be 
done ; grammar must be developed by itself and language by itself. 
If I am incorrect, I beg to be excused. I can only refer to a few 
features of this report in tbe tabulated programme. A course of 
study is absolutely necessary, but it should be marked " for this day 
only." We take the subject of reading twice every day for the 
first two years, once a day for tbe next six years. Reading is think- 
ing, it should be educated thinking. We cannot do thinking with- 
out the subjects to be learned — as geography and ecience. Science, 
according to the programme, is to be taught by oral lessons. The 
world is round, but children cannot reason. WocH it not be well 
to go into the laboratory to see whether the children oannot reason f* 
The child, by force of hi^ nature, muat reason — must find oui: 
these things. I am quoting from John Dewey. But we are told 
in this reuort that the subject of science, at least a few things iiL 
these subjects, must be told him first. I never knew a case of the 
kind, but it may be. 

Now, I would say to this committee of fivcj have your reading^ 



138 Committee of Fifteen. 

the best literature, — there shonld be nothing but literature. Shonld 
we not have literature from the beginning ? is the question we are 
asking. It seems to be the case that this report leaves very little 
to ask. The child spends all his time in reading — reading what ? 
Can the child learn to get thought in reading ? Some of us think 
he can. Is it not well to follow here the scientific method and find 
out whether the child osn learn to read beautifully and well ? The 
same of writing. I see the millions bowed down for years to the 
copy books. Is there no way out ? Is there no relief ? Is it pos- 
sible for the child to leatn to write as he learns to talk, or mnafc 
hz be bound to the desk ? fTime ] 

I would simply say that thi-i report should be entitled to the 
greatest respect. I shall go home and study it carefully and 
prayerfully. I move that a committee of fifteen be appointad to 
revise this report. [Great applause ] 

Peksident Chakles De Garmo, Swarthmore College^ Penn- 
■syhania; Fellow teachers : Those who are to discuss this ques- 
tion this morning are placed under a great embarrassment. The 
report should have been distributed before this meeting. That it has 
not been, I learn is not the fault of the officers of the department. 
[Applause ] 

We might infer from what we have heard that the report is 
valueless. This is by no means the case. It is an eatimi^te of 
-educational values. Under the eubjeot of lattgnagp, I quote, " A 
survey of its educational value, sub j active and objective, usually 
produces the conviction that it is to retain the fist place." Under 
arithmetic, "Side by side with language study is the study of 
mathematics in the school, claiming the second place in impor- 
tance." Under geography, " The educational value of geography, 
^8 it is and has been in elementary schools, is obviously very great. 
The edaciitional value of geography is even more apparent if we 
admit the claims of those who argue that the present epoch is the 
beginning of an era." As a oriiiqae of educational values the 
report is a very important one. I would like to call your attention 
to the correlation of the pupil to bis environment. That, I think, 
is an important matter. They have departed, at least in principle, 
irom that old formal discipline a^one ; this individual to be fitted 
^or life must master bi) environment. The committee have 
^examined the various studies as to their value, and that, I think, is 
a grand thing. I cannot see at all that it is a correlation of studies. 
It has been said in your hearing that the throwing of light by 
studies on each other was disregarded. The report presents a 



Committee of Fifteen. 139 

^eij difEerent idea of the correlation of studies. The seoond 
address of last evening — by Miss Arnold — has been referred to 
as an illustration of bringing the studies togeth^^r so that one 
ihrowB light upon another. I think the idea that there is no need 
4>f reform will be reinforced by this report ; that the report will 
^ave a reactionary effect upon those who think that way. The 
committee have denied that we need any reform, or have implied 
that we have the reform already. It seems that the name given 
"to this report should be taken off and the heading *' An essay on 
educational values '' substituted instead. It is true that this com- 
mittee have, at the beginning, laid down a principle that would 
make a correlation. The text is here, but tbe disouseion is lack- 
ing. So far as I have read, I have found but little in the report 
which shows what the sequence of studies should be. There is a 
hint in arithmetic where it says, ' ' Common fractions should come 
before decimals." Is this attempt at the correlation of studies 
anything mere than a series of tunnels through the educational 
^elds with switch oonnectioup, so that if we start in at one end we 
are switched to this or that without any view of the whole 
journey ? We may light these tunnels with electricity, perhaps, 
but, after all, we are spending eight years underground, switching 
irom one tunnel to another. Now the other alternative is to go 
out into the world, out into the sunshine, and follow highways 
so clear that a child can examine all that is about them. It is 
possible to relate one sub j act to the other so that when it is dark 
the child, even if he has not the sun to lighten his eyes, can at 
^ least have some stars of hope above him. 

Pbesident of the Department: From the course the 
discussion has taken, it has seemed to me that Dr. Harris should 
say a word at this point and read some sdditiondl parts of the 
report. 

W. T. Haebis, Commisiioner of Education : I must set myself 
right on Herbart. The report does not allude to Herbart any- 
'where except in re^tpectfal terms. The criticism of the use of Rab- 
inson Crusoe does not attribute its mistakes to the Herbartians. 
Perhaps they would not recognize it as a true statement of their 
method. To make Hetbart of uee in pedagogy we must to some 
extent ignore his philosophy. His usefulness in education is pro- 
portioned to his uselessness as a philosopher. What can we do 
with a philosopher who omits the will from the three departments 
of the mind and retains only intellect and feeling ? Herbart was 
obliged to explain how man comes to act without the will. He ex- 



140 Committee of Fifteen. 

plains that desire can be arcnged by interest in snoh a way that 
action will follow. With this great defect, however, Herbart is 
valuable in ednoation. His doctrine of apperception does not need 
any correction. His doctrine of interest, however, needs some lim- 
itation, beci^ase the idea of the will and the idea of dnty are omitted 
from his system. He mast maka up by the idea of desire and the 
idea of interest. I am snrpriaed that the claim is made here that 
the report does not treat the enlject assigned to it. Correlation of 
stadies is assamed to mean concentration of studies. There is no 
such dtfiaitioD to the word *' correlation'' in any dictionary; only 
fonr or five obscnre books in the English langnsge give the word 
correlation the meaning of concentration. I wa«i told of this sense 
of the word correlation, bat did not believe for a moment that it had 
been the intention of the department of saperintendents, in appoint- 
ing a committee on this sabject, to have a report on the Herbartian 
idea of concentration. 

CHA.BLES McMuBBY, 8taU Normal Universitt/ , Normal, III: 
In one of joar statements read : ** Yoar committee wonld call at- 
tention in this oonDection to the importance of the pedagogical 
principle of analysis and isolation as preceding synthesis and corre- 
lation." Now, as I understand it, this is what this committee has 
attempted to report. Now, he says that this precedes synthesis or 
oorrt^latioff. I would 1 kt to know if there is any dictionary or 
number of dictionaries to make correlation mean what this says — ' 
the analysis and isolation of subjacts of s*udy. 

I have been very much afraid that Dr. Harris would take refuge 
in the diteussion of the snlj^et of the will in which he distinguishes 
Herbart from others. The i^xoluBion of the will is htld as far as 
Herbart is oonosrned of moral education. Now I wish to say that 
Herbart has laid down more and better edncaiional principles than 
any other philosopher. 

The more dif&euit thing is not exactly the best thing lor the 
child in the firat and secoi d grades. There was an old theory 
among the LaHns that if the child could be made to go through 
the diffioulties of a La<in speech, it would prepare him for the diffi- 
cult things *o follow. Now, we wish to have life and not dead for- 
malism. I believe that a thovgbtful stady of this report will 
oonvinoe any tee who is interested in children that it is formal, 
and is a production of this eld idea, based upon language as the 
foundation of all education. 

Pbesident W. H. Hervey, Teachen* College, New York : 1 



Committee of Fifteen, 141 

"find myself drawn in two diteotions on this queation. I fain would 
eleave to everything that has been said thia morniBg as containing 
the tratk< I believe that, so far as this report and these remarks 
confine themselves to educational principles, any one of us may 
agree most heartily. Only where they descend to particnlar appli- 
cations are we at variance. We always are at variance when we de- 
scend from the clouds, but that is no obj action to the clouda. Now, 
I take it there are arrayed before us the two opposing camps, — the 
Hegelian and the Herbartian. What does the Hegelian say ? In 
order that yen may know the world you must turn your back upon 
yourself acd lose yourself ; you lose your life that yon may save it. 
Yon l«ave your home plate, go to the second base, then to the third 
base, and you make a home ran. That is a true type of all devel- 
opment. What, on the other hand, is the standpoint of the Her- 
bartian ? What we know depends upon what we have known. 
A.nd that is true. And what we can do, according to th^s philos- 
ophy, depends upon the interest, the kinetic energy. About this 
matter of will, we have the Galvini»tie theology 8«t over against the 
CTnitarian. Hegel's Lord was a man of war. Herbart brings us 
to view the New Jarusalem. He shows us the church, not militait, 
but triumphant. Herbart distinguishes the good from the evit 
and makes it impossible for a man to do a wrocg deed or to think 
a wrong thought, and that, I take it, is even a higher attainment 
than the Hegelian phiioBophy has thought of. Any one who de- 
velops the will by the man-of-war idea will have a sorry will upon 
kis hands. There is, with the young child, certainly, a synthesis, 
a correlation, a development of taste where the analysis is sup- 
pressed and unconscious ; and yet, my friends, if you attempt to 
educate a boy in the upper grammar grades or the high school 
according to the same principles as the primary grades, you make a' 
sorry mnes of it. If we would pass from the state of the child to 
the state of the mar, it is neoesEary for us to go through the dry 
bones of analysis. 

Db. B. a. H117SDALE, Univertity of Michigan, Ann Arbor : 
There are two things which I wish very briefly to touch. First, I 
do not understand Dr. Harris, in speaking of Hsrbart and the will, 
to leave the subject in the form in which Dr. McMurry understood 
that matter. I understand that Herbart does not base morals upen 
the will, but rather upon the feeling and the desires. Now, whether 
the will or the desires furnish a proper basis is a question I do not 
wish to discuss. Certainly, when any one says that the Doctor de- 
clared that Herbart does not take the question of morals into ac- 



142 Committee of Fifteen. 

oonnt he makes a mistake. I nnderBtand him to say that Heibart 
does not plaoe morals npon the proper fonndation. In regard to 
conrsea of stndy, there is no eneh thing as considering this qaestiom 
apart from criteria. Now, what are onr criteria to be ? That I d& 
not propose to dlscnes, bnt where are we to seek for onr criteria ? ' 
For myself, I have been in the habit of discussing that subjeot m 
this way. These are to be fonnd, in the first plaoe, in the coDStita-> 
tion of the human son!, and second, in the facts that constitute the 
environment of men. I do not say which is below the other. I do 
say that a serious mistake will be made by that pedagogist who 
leaves out either of these or gives either a very inferior pcsition. 
A.8 to how either nresupposes the other, that ia a very important 
question, but I cannot discuss it at more length. 

Now as to the process of isolation — the first process of knowl- 
edge is to isolate things. We have certainly been taught that the 
first process of the mind ia not a synthetic, but an analytic prooeaa. 
Every person coming into this ball took a view of it as a whole^ 
and then began to isolate this thing from that, and then this proc- 
ess, after a time, ceased. Bat that there ia to be no synthesis ia a 
proposition which I do not understand to be in this report. 

When a child comes to school you may divide the subjects which 
occupy his attention into two groups. The first are the elementary 
school arts,— as the improving of apeech, the atudies of readings 
writing, drawing, and numerical caicnlationa, if he haa never en- 
tered npon these. They are not studies, they are the arts of the 
elementary school. We teach them, not for their own sake, bnt 
that they may be used as instruments. [Time called by the chair° 
man, and extended by vote of the house.] 

I wish, in the first instance, to express my sense of gratification. 
I felt that I was leaving the matter in a very imperfect form. 

Now, I had said all that I care to say about the arts in the ele« 
mentary sehcola. There are the atudiea, I mean the real studies, 
those we study for the purpose of getting out of them all that there 
is in them. Now, there is a discussion aa to the relation in which 
the two classes of studies shall stand at the beginning. Now, the 
old idea was, that some of the first time in school should be devoted 
to these arts, and the studies were permitted to fall into the back- 
ground, or perhaps fall clear cut. Now, if I underatand aome of the 
pedagogists, their idea is to put the beginner at the real thing, or per- 
haps I should say to keep him at the real thing, that the arta should 
be acquired during the atudies. Now, the question occurs to me, 
whether, in the elementary schools, theae arta can ever be suooeaa- 
fully taught when we are pretending to teach aomething else ? I 



Committee of Fifteen. 143 

mnat aay that if the object were to have a papil advance the great° 
est distance for the first three months or six months, yon had better 
say nothing about the arts at all* Bat we pat him at the arts, 
knowing that when we pat these gifts into his hands we are givlns^ 
him an instrnment of power that he will be able to ase throaghont 
his whole life. [A.pplaase.] 

Now, the qaestion of concentration, so-called, is involved in this 
matter. I want to aek the qaestion, and I woald discaas it if X 
had a qaarter of an hour, — I want to aek the qaestion, how far ife 
is possible to do two things in an intense manner at the same time. 
When I was anperintendent of schools, a gentleman picked cff the 
table a so-called physiological reader, and, lookiog at the title page, 
said, ''For one, I conld never teach physiology as a snbjact and 
reading as an art at the same time. The physiology is not and it 
cannot be made a proper material for a school reading book ; a 
proper school reading book cannot be made a good physiology." 
Yet I believe in concentration, if it means letting one sabjsot assist 
and enforce another. I hope none of the brethren will become ho 
enthasiastic as to assame that the whole round of information can 
be brought under the teaching of one subject. [Applause.] 

Db. E. E. White, Columbus, O. : I have a little hesitation in 
speaking on this question, where I am only a learner. I am anxious 
to know what my young friends mean. I hope I shall get the oor-> 
relation of their ideas in time. [Laughter. ] 

As it seems to me, correlation, as a distinctive method, assumes 
to do more than it is possible for a method to accomplish. In my 
judgment, there is no one method of education, whether it be Her- 
bartian or otherwise. To assume that a human soul is to be ex* 
clusively educated by the Herbartian method is a great assumption. 
I do not believe that we are to supplement and supplant now all 
that has been known in the education of the young based on the 
psychology which the defenders of this method are willing to dis- 
card. There are many of its methods we are willing to accept, but 
the Herbartian pedagogy is based on the Herbartian psychology^ 
and if you discard that, you have no system of pedagogy, but you 
have many elements which you can utilize. Now, we make a mis- 
take when we assume that there is only one method by which the 
young man in colUge and the children canlbe educated. The lady 
who spoke last night, Miss Arnold, had not such an idea. Now 
there is a blending in the primary grades which is not possible ia 
the upper grades. That is emphasized completely in what we call 
the special courses in colleges. That blending may be on mer» 



«44 Committee of Fifteen. 

'flurfaee relations which will be discarded as soon as we pass above 
the primary grades. While we maj concede that this is possible 
in one exercise, it is not possible in higher instrnotion. 0«z 
^methods change, so let us not be too sweeping, too confident in oar 
terms. Farther, I think that Dr. Harris ia entirely right in the 
position he has taken as to the meanir g of coordination or correlation. 
He n^ea the term oorreladun, not ooi:^ in its ecientifio, bat in its 
recognized pedagogic sebbe. Cuncentration is a dffarent process, 
&nd should receive separate consideration. May I add that the 
views I recently presented cnder what ia called concentration seem 
to make class iastraction impossible. They lead clearly to the one 
^oQolasion, that eve^y child should be taught as an individual, by 
himself, and this means that all class instruction ia to be given up. 
Individual instruction can alone meet the conditions assumed to be 
essential by concentration, as explained. What does this involve? 
There have been many scholars since the Fload, — scholars who 
have honored learning and widened its domaia. How were they 
produced ? Not by any one method, and certainly not by " con- 
centration." These hoets of scholars canoot be accounted for on 
any such assumption, for they were produced under very unlike 
systems of elementary training. The history of school education 
shows that we are not shut up to a dist of pedagogic hash on the 
one hand, or one of baked beans on the other. There ia clearly 
no one universal method or process in educati >n by which alone a 
baman soul ia to be brought to power. 

Db. Nicholas Murea.y Butler, Columbia CdUge, New 
York : This is an interesting and exciting fiald of battle ; it has not 
been a Ball Run, and it ia manifestly not an Appomattox. Bat let 
ua be fair, and let ua diacuea the queation that is presented by this 
report. I shall spend no time in eulogizing this report. I do say 
that such a report, presented at this time, dealing with this specifiis 
topic in these words, is little leas than a misrepresentation. 

Such a document as thia, presented at this particular time in the 
history of our educational development, and supposed to deal with 
the practical problem of the correlation of studies, is extremely 
unfortunate. This discussion has made it plain that there is among 
Qt a difEerenoe of opinion as to what the term '* correlation of 
studies" means. This report interprets it to mean the correlation 
between the studies of the school curriculum, and the intellectual 
environment of the pupil. Certainly that is not what the term is 
taken to mean in our current educational literature and in oar our* 
:f ent educational discussions. It has been claimed on thia platform 



Committee of Fifteen. 145 

that those who nse the phzaae " correlatioa of Btadies," in refer- 
enoe to the interdependenoe of school anbjecta one with another, 
are making a strained and improper use of the word. This eriti- 
ciam is not oorraet. The highest authority that we have, the 
" Centary Dictionary," gives as a definition of correlation, *Hhe 
aot of bringing into orderly oonneetion or reciprocal relation." 
It recites a passage from the great work of Grove, who first made 
this term familiar in Eaglish scientific literature, in illastration of 
the meaning of correlation. This is precisely the sense in which 
the word is nsed by Dr. MoMarry and others, and it is precisely 
the sense in which we expect to find it ased in this report. There- 
fore, I say I am disappointed, and grievonsly disappointed, that we 
have in these passes only a passing reference to the real problem of 
correlation or concentration as it is before American teachers at 
the present moment. 

I can find no fault with the use of the word selected by the Com- 
mittee, but I do complain that they have not treated the problem, 
whatever name they chooae to give to it, that we aaked tbem to 
solve. Instead of that, they have given us a splendid and learned 
diicuBsion of educational values, an analysis of the history of th» 
school curriculum, and an elaborate defence of the itatui quo. It 
is apparent to me, therefore, that this report faces backward and 
forward. I say this despite the fact that it suggests and argues 
for more than one important innovation in the curriculum. 

For one hundred years, ever since the time of Festalozzi, we 
have been trying to extract the cnrriculam from a philosophical 
discussion of this sort, bat we have not succeeded in satisfying our- 
■elves wholly. We have made great advance, and for that advance 
we in America are indebti^d more largely to Dr. Harris than to 
any other single person, living or dead. He has taught us to un- 
derstand why certain specific branches of knowledge are selected 
for a place in the curriculum, and now we ask him to tell us how 
they are to be correlated, or coordinated, or concentrated, in prac- 
tice, to meet the new demcinds that are made upon the school, and 
we get no answer in this report. 

The curriculum that this report recommends to us, and the 
methods that it outlines, are arrived by an analysis made from the 
adult point of view. Are we, then, to understand that child study 
is to be given no hearing ? Are we shut up to formal analysis as 
the sole method in evolving a practical school plan ? The newer 
education answers this question directly in the negative. It is 
putting the child in the place of honor and asking him to tell as 
what his nature demands and in what order it demands it. Dr. 



S46 Committee of Fifteen. 

White has said that the legitimate result of this newer moTement is 
Individ aaliam in teaching. I agree with him ahaolately. We hope 
that the time will eome when the individuality o£ every ehild will 
1)6 respected. We want to reaoae each child from the thraldom 
to which the formalism of the schoolroom has subjected him. For 
the sake of system we sire redneini; fifty; sixty, or seventy individ- 
ual children in a schoolroom to a common denominator. It is true 
that there is no universal educational method, and that the Her- 
bsrtians are as little likely as the Hegelians to provide us with a 
%nle that shall know no exception. Bat in the point of view that 
they take, based upon the doctrine of apperception and upon the 
doctrine of interest, they Are absolutely right, and it is not what 
we expected from a committee of this kind to find this entire move- 
ment turned out of court without a hearing. Personally I am a 
slavish adherent of no school of thought and wear the badge of 
none, but I do say that we should not be prevented from giving to 
this great Herbartian movement prolonged and sympathetic exam- 
ination. Why is it that we find th§^ question of the correla- 
tion or the C3ne9nt;ration of studies forced upon us at all ? Cer- 
tainly the normal child-mind sees the world about it as a correlated 
and concentrated whole. It is the adults and philosophers who 
liave made the analysis that has reaulted in separating what to the 
«hild is connected; so that, after all, the advocates of oorrslatiou 
are simply endeavoring to put the subjects of study back where 
they found them^ and to treat the curriculum from the child's 
point of view. The adult is able to distinguish a physical fact 
from a chemical fact, a geographical fact from an historical fact, 
«n arithmetical fact from an algebraical fact, but the child is not. 
He views them all simply as facta, and originally they are all on 
the same pUne with regard to his intelligence. We must, therefore, 
aaek the real unity that underlies the curriculum, and not proceed 
by making first an artificial separation of studies, and then a 
doubly artificial synthesis of them. 

A preceding speaker has sharply criticised the psychology of 
Herbart. It is undoubtedly true that we cannot accept Herbart's 
psychology as a satiefaotory explanation of mental life. But it is 
aot necessary that we should do so in order to seonre the benefit 
of the edacational theory and the educational practice that bears 
Herbart's name. 

SuPERlNTEPrDEBrT S. T. DuTTON, BrookUm^ Mas$. : About all 
lias been said that needs to be said now. It seems to me that the 
question takes this form — the same God that made the child made 



Committee of Fifteett. 147 

the woild about him. The puTpose of those who mean to work out 
laomethiog better is to fiad hov the child shoald be taaght. My 
iriends, we do not recognize the valae of thia report. Dr. Harris 
said very distinctly that the course of study in point should include 
the whole round of human koowlsdge. Now, there are two things 
that have helped me in this matter. My view ia singularly difEer- 
€nt from Dr. Whitens. If correlation makes the kindergartsn 
what it is, it seems to me that it should go on. It eeema to me that, 
in a certain way, this is true ia the first year, in the second, etc. 

This cro3s section brings in so many things we fiad imposed upon 
the schools that certain confusion and certain difficulties have been 
found in working out the Hecbartian plan. The only way is the 
working out of these prinoiplea. If that is not done, we shall haye 
reaction. I am not afraid that this wock shall be retarded because 
of thia report. Every teacher ought to understand this disouieion 
of educational values. It ought to help us ; it will help us. If 
this report is not complete, it will be complsted in the good works 
of teachers in all thia country. [ The chair here announced that 
Colonel Parker and Dr. Harris would be asked to oloae the debate.] 

Colonel Fabkeb: Shall we study this que&tion with open 
and unprejudiced minds ? I am not a Herbartian. I simply ask 
the most careful study of all these questions and sjstsms. There 
was a time when method seemed to bs incarcated. Now, in regard 
to this report and the eminent philosopher who wrote it, I would 
not say one word escepfc of the most profound respect. I am never 
going even to make a pun before a teachers' mteting hereafter. 
When Df . Harris says I do not believe in grammar, he should say 
that I do not believe in certain methods. I respect butterflies and 
grubs, but I respect language. When Dr. White says that certain 
thingtf are plain by coQCsntration, he says what I know nothing 
about. Herbart said of Featalozzl that his great merit did not 
consist in his method and his means, but in hie sublime zeal. He 
who faces this question of education faces infinity. I protest 
against unfair statemant as to discipleship, following leader, and 
so forth. I acknowledge that I make such statements myself, but 
I hope to do better. When Df. White speaks of the great giants, 
we have but to look at him and know it is true. But do we ever 
question what has bsen lost ? We are facing the great problems of 
the twentieth oantury, and the present methods of teaching are 
not equal to their solution. Under God, let na find the truth and 
follow it. Let us have the means of knowing what each teacher 
and each superintendent is doing for the child. Let us not lay 



iniiiit' 

019 760 006 8 




148 Committee of Fifteen. 

down a great edaoational dootrina and say, that it ia sufficient* 
The Sermon on th^ Mount is snffioient for nineteen oentnries ; but 
what we want is an application of Hegel, of Herbart, and of th& 
wisdom of all other philosophers to the problems of the fntnre» 
All hail the f atare ! 

Db, W. T. Habbis : I wish to add one remark as to the mean- 
ing of correlation. I would call attention to its etymology, which 
makes it a bringing into relation of what is oc ordinate. I knew of 
the Herbartian idea of concentration of studies, but I was not 
familiar with the use of the word " correlation " in the same sense 
as concentration. I have given an example in discussing the 
methods of teaching geography of the application of the deeper 
doctrine of concentration. I have shown that we should start with 
the child and proceed in two directions, one towards the elements 
of difference in order to explain the obstacles which man has to 
overcome. On the other side, we should go towards the subjects of 
human industry, invention, and commerce, and learn the method 
by which man overcomes the " elements of difference." Geog- 
raphy for the child should begin in the centre and move outward 
towards these extremes, including at every step a human side and a 
natural side. This is not a philosophical study of correlation, 
Hegelian or otherwise, although it has been called so in this de- 
bate, bat a scientific study of the educational value of the branches 
of the course of study. I began it in 1870. Now, in a scientific 
study one does not allow his feelings of attraction or repulsion to 
cloud his reason. He assumes an unprejudiced attitude towards 
the object that he studies. Child study, as it is pursued by Dr. 
Stanley Hall, is pursued with this true scientific spirit. But child 
study is not the only thing in education, nor can education be 
founded on child study alone. The child is here to be correlated 
with the world. The educator must study the world and study the 
child, and correlate the one to the other. That is to say, he must 
bring the child into a knowledge of the world and a mastery of its 
appliances. The report, of course, assumes the value of child study, 
and in all the numerous places where attention is called to the 
danger of producing arrested development the results of child 
study are drawn upon; but, on the other hand, if yon have a 
knowledge of the child, and do not have a knowledge of the sig- 
nificance of the branches of study and the way in which they un- 
lock the world of reality, yon cannot correlate the child with the 
world. 



